EMILY KWONG, HOST:
Do you remember your dreams? I don't. But in "The Dream Hotel," a new book by Pulitzer finalist Laila Lalami, dreams are surveilled through special implants designed to help people get a good night of sleep, but that data is also sold to the government. And the results are life-altering. Laila Lalami joins me now. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
LAILA LALAMI: Thank you for having me.
KWONG: Talk about the character who's at the heart of "The Dream Hotel." How did she come to you? And what is the world she's living in?
LALAMI: Right. So my character's name is Sara Hussein. She's a historian by training, but she works for the Getty Museum as an archivist. She's a very busy mom of twin toddlers, and she has what is, by all accounts, a very ordinary life. And then one day, she's returning home from a conference abroad when she is pulled aside because her dreams indicate that she will soon commit a crime. So this...
KWONG: Her actual while-she's-asleep dreams.
LALAMI: (Laughter) Yes.
KWONG: Yeah.
LALAMI: Yes. And so the character came to me a few years ago. I had written a version of this book that took place in a tech company, and it wasn't going anywhere. But then, one day I had this idea of this woman stepping out of her room, having this implant that gets checked by this mysterious attendant to make sure she hasn't tampered with it. And I kind of just followed that character page by page and...
KWONG: Woah.
LALAMI: ...Got to know her a little bit, got to know her relationship with her family, with her husband, with her children, the kind of life she had, and how everything sort of unravels through this encounter with agents from risk - the Risk Assessment Administration.
KWONG: Yeah.
LALAMI: So it was great fun to kind of get to follow her as she comes face-to-face with the surveillance state.
KWONG: And you're very careful to write that the women at the center of this book are being retained, not detained. What is the difference and why is it relevant to your story?
LALAMI: Yeah. So again, because this book investigates the world of dreams, the most private part of ourselves, and looks at what might happen when data collection penetrates it, we're now, you know, firmly in the territory of intentions - right? - where people might get, I don't know, you know, apprehended on a street because of, you know, speech crimes or thought crimes. We're already at that level. So, it seemed the next level would be, you know, what if it is this world of the imagination?
KWONG: And was that inspired by your own dreaming, or how did that come to you?
LALAMI: (Laughter).
KWONG: Did you have a dream about this book? I don't know.
LALAMI: No, no, it came to me because I had overslept one morning, and I reached for my phone, first thing to look at the time. And I saw a Google notification that said, if you leave right now, you will make it to the name of my yoga studio at 7:28.
KWONG: Yeah.
LALAMI: And I had never told, you know, obviously, Google what day of the week or what time of day or even that I went to yoga, but obviously...
KWONG: Yeah.
LALAMI: ...The company had followed my movements and learned my habits. And so I was understandably disturbed by that. I think by design, surveillance technology is meant to be invisible. Yes, we know that our devices collect data about us, but all of that data collection is meant to be seamless and invisible. And that Google notification was kind of a moment where the curtains parted and I got a glimpse of just how granular the data that they collect can be. And I remember I turned to my husband, and I said, you know, pretty soon, the only privacy any of us will have left will be in our dreams. And, of course, being a novelist, I thought, well, wait - what if someday that actually does happen, that we continue on this trend of using technologies for every single thing that we do? Why not, you know, sleep aids that help you sleep, but also collect data about you in your sleep?
KWONG: So there's just this bit of writing from the book that I can't stop thinking about. It's page 306. You write, Sara - (reading) she wants to be free. And what is freedom if not resting of the self from the gaze of others, including her own? Life is meant to be lived, to be seized for all the beauty and joy to be wrung out of it. It isn't meant to be contained and inventoried for the sake of safety.
Now that this book is out in the world, what do you want people to take away from that message?
LALAMI: Well, I think what I would want, first of all, is for people to just be moved by this character and her journey from this person who feels herself to be at a remove from this surveillance state to a person who's very much implicated in it and by it, to be moved by that journey, to feel that if a character like that can manage to find a way out, then surely we, too, have the power to figure out our own ways to free them. And I think, you know, particularly because this is a book about surveillance, to have it be a warning. You know, sometimes we accept so much of that surveillance into our lives and don't question the end the end result of it, you know, where this is all going, what it is doing to our relationships, what it is doing to our society and, most importantly, what it's doing to our sense of selves. If you are continually behaving in certain ways because you're trying to avoid, I don't know, you know, having comments from strangers online, or you're trying...
KWONG: Yeah.
LALAMI: ...To avoid the gaze of the camera or you're trying to avoid - you know, then you have lost your sense of freedom.
KWONG: Yeah. Have you yourself changed how you live and your relationship to technology since writing this book?
LALAMI: This is the question that has come up so much (inaudible).
KWONG: Clearly on everyone's minds.
LALAMI: (Laughter) Yes, yes. Yes, I would say that I have spent the last 10 years thinking about this book. I actually started writing it in 2014. So I've been thinking about technology very carefully over the last 10 years, and it has been very sobering to watch how it has woven itself into every part of our lives. And it is true that I have begun the process of trying to untether myself from as many of these apps as possible. So I've been on a journey to kind of remove - you know, I take it as a challenge. I try to live with as few of them as possible. But also, I'm now - my new thing that I've begun doing is to try to reduce the amount of time I spend online at all, you know...
KWONG: Yeah.
LALAMI: ...To decrease it. There is - life is meant to be lived offline (laughter).
KWONG: Well, I've enjoyed talking to you through good old-fashioned conversation.
LALAMI: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
KWONG: Thank you so much for coming on the show, Laila Lalami. "Dream Hotel" is available now wherever books are sold.
LALAMI: Thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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