Latest news with #Lalami
The Age
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
In The Dream Hotel, even thinking about murder is enough to send you to jail
FICTION The Dream Hotel Laila Lalami Bloomsbury, $26.69 Prison is a place beyond shame, writes Laila Lalami in her gripping new novel, The Dream Hotel. Lalami's main character, Sara Hussein, is imprisoned yet has not committed any crime; she is being detained because she dreams of murder. And every murder starts with a fantasy, officials say. The Dream Hotel is set in a future when people's thoughts, actions and dreams are monitored, monetised and weaponised by tech companies and authorities in the name of convenience and public safety. Each person has a risk score, based on hundreds of data sources including their family, spending, health, education, criminal history and reputation. Hussein, an archivist and mother of baby twins, is detained at Los Angeles Airport after flying home from a conference in London. First, she is annoyed by the delay; then she is mystified as there'd been no major change in her life since the last time she'd seen her risk report. 'She didn't lose her job, didn't get evicted, didn't default on a loan, didn't receive public assistance, didn't owe child support, didn't abuse drugs, didn't suffer a mental health crisis, any of which might have ticked up her score,' writes Lalami. 'And she didn't have a criminal record – wasn't that the biggest factor in calculating the likelihood of a future crime?' But Hussein had chosen to install an implant in her brain to improve her sleep quality. The product manufacturer had then harvested that data and trained artificial intelligence to look for patterns and make predictions. The device revealed that Hussein had dreamed of killing her husband, with whom she was juggling the care of young children. 'The algorithm knows what you're thinking of doing, before even you know it,' a warden explains. Labelled a 'questionable person', Hussein is sent to a women's 'retention' centre for an observation period of 21 days. But three weeks come and go: Hussein can only leave when her risk score falls below the legal limit. Prisoners are told if they are compliant and work hard – doing mind-numbing jobs to boost income for the prison's sharemarket-listed owner – they will eventually be released. But the prison's rules are capricious, and Hussein struggles with compliance. Readers are left wondering whether Hussein will ever escape. The Dream Hotel contemplates the nature of freedom for people who have never lived without internet surveillance, and bear the brunt of its most brutal applications. The novel's imagined crime-prevention prison program is popular among the broader population.
Sydney Morning Herald
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The dystopian novel that might make you consider the current reality
FICTION The Dream Hotel Laila Lalami Bloomsbury, $26.69 Prison is a place beyond shame, writes Laila Lalami in her gripping new novel, The Dream Hotel. Lalami's main character, Sara Hussein, is imprisoned yet has not committed any crime; she is being detained because she dreams of murder. And every murder starts with a fantasy, officials say. The Dream Hotel is set in a future when people's thoughts, actions and dreams are monitored, monetised and weaponised by tech companies and authorities in the name of convenience and public safety. Each person has a risk score, based on hundreds of data sources including their family, spending, health, education, criminal history and reputation. Hussein, an archivist and mother of baby twins, is detained at Los Angeles Airport after flying home from a conference in London. First, she is annoyed by the delay; then she is mystified as there'd been no major change in her life since the last time she'd seen her risk report. 'She didn't lose her job, didn't get evicted, didn't default on a loan, didn't receive public assistance, didn't owe child support, didn't abuse drugs, didn't suffer a mental health crisis, any of which might have ticked up her score,' writes Lalami. 'And she didn't have a criminal record – wasn't that the biggest factor in calculating the likelihood of a future crime?' But Hussein had chosen to install an implant in her brain to improve her sleep quality. The product manufacturer had then harvested that data and trained artificial intelligence to look for patterns and make predictions. The device revealed that Hussein had dreamed of killing her husband, with whom she was juggling the care of young children. 'The algorithm knows what you're thinking of doing, before even you know it,' a warden explains. Labelled a 'questionable person', Hussein is sent to a women's 'retention' centre for an observation period of 21 days. But three weeks come and go: Hussein can only leave when her risk score falls below the legal limit. Prisoners are told if they are compliant and work hard - doing mind-numbing jobs to boost income for the prison's sharemarket-listed owner - they will eventually be released. But the prison's rules are capricious, and Hussein struggles with compliance. Readers are left wondering whether Hussein will ever escape. The Dream Hotel contemplates the nature of freedom for people who have never lived without internet surveillance, and bear the brunt of its most brutal applications. The novel's imagined crime-prevention prison program is popular among the broader population. But how can anyone survive imprisonment when they are judged not by their actions, but by their darkest thoughts and uncontrollable dreams? And when prisoners make money for their jailers, do they stand a fair chance of being released?
The Age
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
The dystopian novel that might make you consider the current reality
FICTION The Dream Hotel Laila Lalami Bloomsbury, $26.69 Prison is a place beyond shame, writes Laila Lalami in her gripping new novel, The Dream Hotel. Lalami's main character, Sara Hussein, is imprisoned yet has not committed any crime; she is being detained because she dreams of murder. And every murder starts with a fantasy, officials say. The Dream Hotel is set in a future when people's thoughts, actions and dreams are monitored, monetised and weaponised by tech companies and authorities in the name of convenience and public safety. Each person has a risk score, based on hundreds of data sources including their family, spending, health, education, criminal history and reputation. Hussein, an archivist and mother of baby twins, is detained at Los Angeles Airport after flying home from a conference in London. First, she is annoyed by the delay; then she is mystified as there'd been no major change in her life since the last time she'd seen her risk report. 'She didn't lose her job, didn't get evicted, didn't default on a loan, didn't receive public assistance, didn't owe child support, didn't abuse drugs, didn't suffer a mental health crisis, any of which might have ticked up her score,' writes Lalami. 'And she didn't have a criminal record – wasn't that the biggest factor in calculating the likelihood of a future crime?' But Hussein had chosen to install an implant in her brain to improve her sleep quality. The product manufacturer had then harvested that data and trained artificial intelligence to look for patterns and make predictions. The device revealed that Hussein had dreamed of killing her husband, with whom she was juggling the care of young children. 'The algorithm knows what you're thinking of doing, before even you know it,' a warden explains. Labelled a 'questionable person', Hussein is sent to a women's 'retention' centre for an observation period of 21 days. But three weeks come and go: Hussein can only leave when her risk score falls below the legal limit. Prisoners are told if they are compliant and work hard - doing mind-numbing jobs to boost income for the prison's sharemarket-listed owner - they will eventually be released. But the prison's rules are capricious, and Hussein struggles with compliance. Readers are left wondering whether Hussein will ever escape. The Dream Hotel contemplates the nature of freedom for people who have never lived without internet surveillance, and bear the brunt of its most brutal applications. The novel's imagined crime-prevention prison program is popular among the broader population. But how can anyone survive imprisonment when they are judged not by their actions, but by their darkest thoughts and uncontrollable dreams? And when prisoners make money for their jailers, do they stand a fair chance of being released?
The Guardian
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami review – what if AI could read our minds?
Arriving home at Los Angeles international airport, Sara Hussein is asked by immigration and customs officers to step aside, then taken to an interview room. The fundamentals of this scene are familiar – you've probably watched something like it in a film, or dreamed about it happening to you; perhaps it already has. But Sara lives in a new world, several decades in the future, and she is being arrested because Scout, the state's AI security system, has flagged something irregular inside her mind. Sara seems unexceptional: she's a museum archivist, married and mother to young twins. She once had an argument with her husband Elias after he impulsively part-exchanged the family Toyota for a Volvo. Sara sees herself as a person who 'couldn't possibly be considered a member of the lawbreaking classes', until the moment at the airport when an officer informs her that her 'risk score' is too high, and sends her to Madison, a California women's retention centre housed in a former elementary school. At Madison, a record of good behaviour will lower her score; however, this record lies in the hands of her guards. She is not sufficiently subordinate, and can't get her number down. 'Retainees' are held initially for 21 days, then on a rolling basis, potentially for ever. This isn't punishment but risk management, for anybody considered likely to commit a crime. Every citizen has a risk score, extrapolated via algorithm from personal cloud data, from surveillance networks, and from the Dreamsaver – a widely used skull implant that delivers more restful sleep. The small print of Dreamsaver Inc grants the company rights to share the user's dreams with the government. People are OK with this; it seems to have reduced terrorism. The Dream Hotel is Laila Lalami's fifth novel – earlier works received nominations for the Booker, Pulitzer and National book awards – and has been longlisted for the Women's prize. Her 2020 nonfiction book, Conditional Citizens, draws on her experiences as a Moroccan American to think about her adopted country's two-tier system: how rights and freedoms are, in practice, exercised very differently across race, class, gender and national origin. Lalami's fiction has explored the way these differences play out across a range of times and places: from Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (2005), on migrant experiences in modern Morocco, to The Moor's Account (2014), inspired by the true story of a 16th-century Black man who survived a notorious Spanish colonial expedition to the Americas. Her most recent novel, 2019's The Other Americans, is set in California in the shadow of the Iraq war, and follows the causes and repercussions of the moment when Driss, a Moroccan immigrant, is killed at an intersection by a speeding car. In The Dream Hotel, Lalami turns to the future. The novel is especially interesting as a vision of how AI could weave itself into the two-tier system that she has described and reimagined in earlier works. Sara contrasts the apparent neutrality of Scout's 'new era of digital policing' with the racist treatment her Moroccan immigrant parents received at US airports during her childhood. However, familiar prejudices are built into new tools, which search for specific deviations from an enforced norm. Some bad arguments and weird dreams, a relative who has been in prison and a history of drug use are enough for conviction. Sara's medical notes link to a record documenting that she was the victim of a sexual assault when she was 19. This adds three points to her risk score. Reading The Dream Hotel is a physical experience: it's rare for a novel to induce so strong a sense of powerlessness and frustration. Like many technologies, Lalami's AI renders its users, from the individual to the state, simultaneously smarter and more stupid. It harvests vast quantities of data, then fundamentally misunderstands it. Meanwhile retainees' hearings are randomly deferred; visits denied; phone calls cut off and overcharged; privacies invaded. 'Prison is a place beyond shame.' Sara gradually absorbs the reality that she has become one of the people the state can punish. She dispatches emails of complaint to an interface whose blank replies denote impunity: 'We are working to resolve service disruptions'; 'This ticket is marked as resolved.' In this sharp, sophisticated novel of forecasts and insightful takes, what I found most powerful was the great bewilderment that the characters share. Lalami traces the upheaval of AI through systems and structures into personal lives, close relationships and quiet thoughts. Sara privately questions whether she has a hidden potential for violence. An interlude at the centre of the novel follows a tech executive who is straining to make sense of her vast yet miserable power. Perhaps you wouldn't ordinarily pick up a novel in search of an experience of confusion. But The Dream Hotel has a burning quality, both in its swift, consuming escalation – you can't look away – and in the clarity and purpose of what it shows. Sara is drawn into the bizarre logic through which imprisonment and a two-tier system make one another make sense. 'She must've done something,' says one new retainee of a longtime resident. 'I mean, if they're keeping her here this long, then they must have something on her.' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami is published by Bloomsbury (£16.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Associated Press
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
Book Review: ‘The Dream Hotel' is a dystopian world in which people are detained for dreams
Anyone who spends time on the internet knows that our demographics, preferences and interests are assiduously tracked by Big Tech companies hoping to capture more of our dollars. They record our keystrokes, time spent on certain web pages, how long we hover over different subjects. What if those companies shared the information with a government intent on tracking our every move to determine not only if we had broken the law, but planned to commit crimes? That's the question that Pulitzer Prize finalist Laila Lalami explores in her new novel 'The Dream Hotel,' published this month. In this novel that recalls the societal oppression and alienation in the works of Margaret Atwood and Franz Kafka, protagonist Sara Hussein is detained at the airport as she returns to Los Angeles from a conference in London. Because a sleep device controlling her insomnia allows her dreams to be tracked without her knowledge, Sara has been deemed likely to commit a violent crime and taken to a 'retention center' for 21 days of observation. That period is repeatedly extended unilaterally by center employees for infractions such as using an unapproved hair style or loitering in a hallway. Sara is Moroccan American like Lalami, who has dug deep into her heritage for past novels including 'The Moor's Account,' which was a Pulitzer finalist in 2015. Lalami's bestselling 2019 novel 'The Other Americans,' is about the suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant in the U.S. The controls that Sara suddenly finds herself subject to stem from the Crime Prevention Act that Congress passed after 86 people were shot dead on live television during a Super Bowl halftime show in Miami. The broadcast watched by 118 million viewers was rapidly pulled off the air and another 32 people were killed off camera. Outraged citizens noted that the shooter's past was littered with red flags that could have prevented the killings – several cases of domestic violence, the recent purchase of bump stocks and ammunition on a personal credit card, his grievances against a team doctor. Backers of the act focused on the idea of using commercial data analysis as an investigative tool by law enforcement, and granting government broader access to private records, leading to the identification and detention of people deemed likely to commit violent crimes. A new Risk Assessment Administration began tracking many aspects of citizens' lives like a credit agency collects data on loan repayments and credit card usage. Getting evicted, fired, even suffering a mental health crisis could all be cause for suspicion that an individual was likely to commit violence. In Sara's case, additional tracking can be done through a device embedded in a patient seeking care for sleep issues that can read their dreams. The stated mission is to keep American communities safe using advanced data analytics tools to investigate suspicious individuals and identify public safety risks to prevent future crimes. At the retention center operated by the Safe-X company, Sara yearns for nearly a year to be reunited with her husband and their twin toddlers, a girl and boy. Sara doesn't even remember the dream that made her subject to retention — a nightmare about killing the spouse she loves. 'Police officers used to patrol neighborhoods they called 'rough,' stopping and searching people they thought were suspicious,' Lalami writes, 'now they sift through dreams.'
