Sleeping Children

'Magnificent' Annie Ernaux

Anthony Passeron, Frank Wynne

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English

Picador
10 June 2025

Fiction & Literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

It is 1981. As a wave of puzzling medical cases sweeps across the US, a Parisian doctor is presented with a rare case of a disease long thought to be eradicated. It marks the beginning of a race on both sides of the Atlantic to make sense of a deadly virus that will define a generation.

Miles away in rural France, Anthony Passeron's family are dealing with a crisis of their own. Their small village is gripped by another epidemic - heroin addiction. Anthony's uncle Désiré, once the pride of the family, has become one of its many 'sleeping children'. Often found unconscious on street corners, he is a stranger to his family. As Désiré's life descends into chaos, the thunder of the AIDS crisis grows closer. These two stories - one intimate, one global - are about to collide.

For readers of Édouard Louis, Douglas Stuart and Annie Ernaux, Sleeping Children is a moving and eye-opening book about shame and the slow poisoning of a family by the secrets it keeps. Exploring the stories of the heroic few who fought for a cure for AIDs and for justice for a community abandoned, it is a radical vision of a history reshaped, retold and remembered.

By: Anthony Passeron
Translated by: Frank Wynne
Imprint: Picador
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 136mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 228g
ISBN: 9781035026494
ISBN 10: 103502649X
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 10 June 2025
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Anthony Passeron was born in Nice in 1983. He teaches French Literature and Humanities at a secondary school. Les enfants endormis (Sleeping Children) is his first novel.

Reviews for Sleeping Children: 'Magnificent' Annie Ernaux

Without ever raising your voice, you have shattered the family silence that scabbed over tragedy and produced a work so powerful, so moving that it lingers long after reading. Magnificent! -- Annie Ernaux, <b>winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature</b> An extraordinarily powerful and beautifully written story about class, family secrets and shame -- <i>Prospect Magazine</i>