Awake in the Floating City: A Novel by Susanna Kwan (Hardcover)

Fiction - Literary - Dystopian - Asian American & Pacific Islander

RELEASE DATE: 5/13/2025

An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.

"An astonishing work of art...This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake." —Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

Bo knows she shouldgo. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.

Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.

AUTHOR BIO: 

SUSANNA KWAN is an artist and writer from San Francisco. Awake in the Floating City is her first novel.

A Most Anticipated Book of the Year from People, San Francisco Chronicle, Electric Literature, Axios San Francisco, 7x7, and HeatMap

"The role of community during environmental disaster is one of the themes that runs through this thoughtful novel about art, creation and the ways we care for one another...Survivalists preparing for an imagined catastrophic future hoard food and supplies and stock up on guns to 'protect' themselves from those in need. But as Kwan shows, such visions of the future are the refractions of nihilism and the American belief that individual survival and success is due solely to individual effort. But that's never been the case. What preserves human life--even a life in horrific circumstances--are relationships of caring and cooperation. Community built on taking care of each other is the only way that we will thrive."
-- Los Angeles Times

"Another strong addition to the library of fiction haunted by climate change. Susanna Kwan's debut novel ponders more than ecological uncertainty, though; it meditates on time and grief, the importance of making art, and the utter centrality of human relationships."
-- Boston Globe

"[A] tender, speculative novel that imagines [Kwan's] home city flooded and largely abandoned--and how two of its last remaining residents find unlikely connection in disaster."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"A kindred spirit with titles such as Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven...Kwan wields a mesmeric command over her language, and though this is a quiet, contemplative novel, it is a deeply rewarding one."
-- ELLE