Anthony Passeron

‘Magnificent’ - Annie Ernaux, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Years‘Supremely skillful’ - The Telegraph‘One of the best books I’ve read in a long time’ - i-DFrance, 1981. A small rural village is gripped by an epidemic of heroin usage. Désiré, once the pride of the family, has become one of its many ‘sleeping children’, found slumped, unconscious, in the street. Against all odds, Désiré’s family desperately try to save him from the lure of addiction as his life descends into chaos. But something else lingers on the horizon, approaching fast. Far away in Paris, alarm bells are ringing. A race across the globe is beginning, urgent to make sense of a deadly new virus, one that will come to define a generation. But within the statistics, documents and landmarks lie the tragic stories of families torn apart, never told, fading slowly into obscurity. Here, then, is the story of Désiré. Anthony Passeron’s debut novel is a passionate attempt to reclaim these narratives, both personal and national; exploring the lives of the heroic few who fought for a cure for AIDs, and finding justice for an abandoned community. Fascinating, angry, deeply moving and utterly unforgettable, Sleeping Children is a novel about two deadly races against time - to find a cure for a disease, and to rescue a family from the jaws of the past. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne

'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, Nobel Prize winning author of The YearsIt 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 by Anthony Passeron 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. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne