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Murder she imagined: The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami reviewed

The Moroccan-born American writer’s fifth novel is set in a US where algorithmic policing has halved gun deaths and despite the loss of liberty the majority are happy with the bargain

5 April 2025

9:00 AM

5 April 2025

9:00 AM

The Dream Hotel Laila Lalami

Bloomsbury Circus, pp.323, 16.99

‘In dreams begins responsibility,’ wrote W.B. Yeats. In the near-future America imagined by Laila Lalami, culpability starts there, too. Charged with the prevention of potential crimes, the Risk Assessment Administration monitors not just every aspect of citizens’ behaviour but, via tiny ‘neuroprosthetics’, the hidden drives revealed in sleep. As an RAA agent insists: ‘Every murder starts with a fantasy.’

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