Awake in the Floating City cover art

Awake in the Floating City

A Novel

Preview
Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Awake in the Floating City

By: Susanna Kwan
Narrated by: Catherine Ho
Try Standard free

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $26.99

Buy Now for $26.99

About this listen

WINNER OF THE ASIAN AMERICAN AWARD FOR LITERATURE IN ADULT FICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE

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.

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FROM PEOPLE MAGAZINE

"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 should go. 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.
Dystopian Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction United States World Literature Heartfelt San Francisco
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.