Samantha Harvey

A genre-defying debut memoir of insomnia by Betty Trask Prize-winner and one of our most singular stylists, Samantha Harvey.

A Year of Not Sleeping

The Shapeless Unease

Emily Perkovich

This was beautiful and made me want to write more than anything has in a long time.

Katie Moore

aywen

Amy Thibodeau

Toby Fehily

‘Easily one of the truest and best books I’ve read about what it’s like to be alive now, in this country’ Max Porter Sleep. Sleep. Like money, you only think about it when you have too little. Then you think about it all the time, and the less you have the more you think about it. It becomes the prism through which you see the world and nothing can exist except in relation to it. Samantha Harvey’s insomnia arrived, seemingly, from nowhere; for a year she has spent her nights chasing sleep that rarely comes. She’s tried everything to appease it. Nothing is helping. What happens when one of the basic human needs goes unmet? For Samantha Harvey, extreme sleep deprivation resulted in a raw clarity about life itself. Original and profound, The Shapeless Unease is a startlingly insightful exploration of memory, writing and influence, death and grief, and the will to survive.

The Shapeless Unease A Year of Not Sleeping

Reviews