The house of sleep - Jonathan Coe

The House of Sleep - Jonathan Coe's comic tale of love and obsession

Sarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams so vivid she mistakes them for real events; Robert has his life changed for ever by the misunderstandings arising from her condition; Terry, the insomniac, spends his wakeful nights fuelling his obsession with movies; and the increasingly unstable Dr Gregory Dudden sees sleep as a life-shortening disease which must be eradicated. . .

A group of students sharing a house. They fall in and out of love, they drift apart. Yet a decade later they are drawn back together by a series of coincidences involving their obsession with sleep - and each other. . .

Winner of the 1998 Prix Mdicis tranger, The House of Sleep is an intensely moving and frequently hilarious novel about love, obsession and sleep.

'Moving, clever, pleasurable, smart...one of the best books of the year' Malcolm Bradbury, The Times

'There are bits that make you laugh out loud and others that make your heart ache' Guardian

'Fiercely clever, witty, wise, hopeful...a compellingly beautiful tale of love and loss' The Times Literary Supplement.