Author Dan Chaon wanted to find a way to write about current times – instability, fear, political division – by creating an alternate version of America. Set in the future, his new book Sleepwalk is a dark and shadowy dystopia "one more pandemic away." Through the story, however, his eccentric main character discovers a longing for kingship and connection that was partly inspired by Chaon's experience as an adoptee meeting his biological father. In an interview on Weekend Edition Saturday, Chaon told Scott Simon that novels are like black holes: Everything you see in the world gets sucked into it.

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