Product Description
The Shapeless Unease
Author: Samantha Harvey
Format: Paperback
A Year of Not Sleeping
**Featured on BBC Radio 4's A Good Read**
'A profound meditation on language and loss and time, and on how we construct ourselves through stories. And it's painful. And it's beautiful. And I love it.' — Nathan Flier
Samantha Harvey's insomnia arrived, seemingly, from nowhere; for a year she has spent her nights chasing sleep that rarely comes. She's tried everything to appease it. Nothing is helping.
What happens when one of the basic human needs goes unmet? For Samantha Harvey, extreme sleep deprivation resulted in a raw clarity about life itself. Original and profound, The Shapeless Unease is a startlingly insightful exploration of memory, writing and influence, death and grief, and the will to survive.
'A delight to read... ineffably rewarding' — Observer
'Easily one of the truest and best books I've read about what it's like to be alive now, in this country' — Max Porter
'How can a book about a sensual deprivation be so sensuous and so full? ... it seemed to give my sleep resonance and poetry. What a beautiful book.' — Tessa Hadley
About the Author
Samantha Harvey is the author of the novels Orbital, The Wilderness, All is Song, Dear Thief and The Western Wind and a work of non-fiction, The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping. Orbital was the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, and her other work has been shortlisted for the James Tait Black Award, the Women's Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the Walter Scott Prize. The Wilderness was awarded the Betty Trask Prize. She is a tutor on the MA course in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.
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