216(Ht mm) 135(Wdt mm) 208

Anthony Passeron was born in Nice in 1983. He teaches French Literature and Humanities at a secondary school. <i>Les enfants endormis</i> (<i>Sleeping Children</i>) is his first novel. The acclaimed French debut, now translated into a dozen languages, about the impact of AIDS on one working-class family and on French society, for readers of Édouard Louis, Didier Eribon and Douglas Stuart. It 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, <i>Sleeping Children</i> 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.