I Dream with Open Eyes: A Memoir (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781640095472)

A journey of reckoning and renewal, this story of family history and future dreams is an examination of the individual imagination as a catalyst for social change

Whatever the ideological slant of our information feeds, nowadays we all share a sense of binge-watching the apocalypse. Facing so much uncertainty, we need a language for thinking about the unknown not simply as a threat but also as a space of fertile possibility. George Prochnik has chosen to reflect on these urgent themes through the lens of a personal narrative: an account of his own family's decision to leave the United States.

I Dream with Open Eyes begins with an exploration of Prochnik's ancestral past: the pilgrimage of his mother's family, who were among the first English settlers in the New World. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, a parallel migration unfolds as Prochnik, along with his wife and their son, makes the decision to uproot their lives in New York to move to England.

A deep critique of this current moment, Prochnik takes the words of nineteenth-century poet Heinrich Heine, "I dream with open eyes, and my eyes see," as an inspiration to ask how, as a society, we might use art and literature to refract and expand our vision of the future, while simultaneously generating a new focus on present realities.

Author: George Prochnik
ISBN-10: 1640095470
ISBN-13: 9781640095472
Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
Language: English
Published: 09/27/2022
Pages: 288
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.19lbs
Size: 9.23h x 6.33w x 0.99d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 05/09/2022
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2022
Booklist 09/15/2022 pg. 11
Shelf Awareness 09/30/2022