Sleeping Children

Passeron, Anthony; Wynne, Frank (TRN)

ISBN 10: 0374612269 / ISBN 13: 9780374612269

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 49516769-n

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Sleeping Children
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374612269
• ISBN 13: 9780374612269
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

An intimate, captivating first novel that tells the story of a family in southern France whose lives are intertwined with the history of the AIDS crisis―and with the forgotten French doctors who are among the first to detect the virus.

It’s 1981. As a wave of mysterious infections sweeps across the United States, a doctor in Paris encounters something unexpected: a case of a disease long thought to have been eradicated. It matches what is happening across the Atlantic―and thus begins a race to make sense of a deadly virus, one that will define a generation.

Miles away, in rural France, Anthony Passeron’s family is 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 the “sleeping children.” Often found unconscious on street corners, he is now 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.

Anthony Passeron’s moving novel is also an eye-opening story about shame and the slow poisoning that secrets can inflict on a family. Exploring the stories of the heroic few who fought not only for a cure but for justice for an abandoned community, Sleeping Children is a radical vision of a history reshaped, retold, and remembered.

About the Authors

Anthony Passeron was born in Nice in 1983. He teaches French literature and Humanities in a secondary school. Sleeping Children is his first novel. He is already working on his next novel.

Frank Wynne is a writer and award-winning literary translator. Born in Ireland he has lived and worked in Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Buenos Aires and currently lives in San José, Costa Rica. He has translated more than a dozen major novels, among them the works of Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Pierre Mérot and the Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma. A journalist and broadcaster, he has written for the Sunday Times, the Independent, the Irish Times, Melody Maker, and Time Out.