The Sleep of Reason

With England on the brink of disruptive social change, a man revisits his past—and confronts a monstrous crime—in this novel of "clarity and perceptiveness" (The Atlantic).

In his late middle age, semi-retired Lewis Eliot, accompanied by his teenage son, journeys to the provincial town where he spent his poverty-stricken boyhood—and where his father is now dying. The London of the 1960s is changing, and this visit is a reminder of the passage of time and the world left behind. But Eliot's reflections are disrupted when he reunites with his now-elderly mentor, George Passant, and becomes involved in a horrifying child-murder case in which Passant's niece stands accused. And as Eliot sees his old friend through the trial, troubling questions arise about responsibility, the root causes of evil, and how, as the painter Goya once observed, the sleep of reason produces monsters.


"[The Strangers and Brothers series] invites comparison not only with Proust but with the other notable multi‐volume novel about modern Britain, Anthony Powell's The Music of Time." —The New York Times

"Lewis Eliot throughout the series has been a most engaging person. . . . Snow is at his best when writing about people under pressure: he makes the struggle for power of engrossing interest." —The Atlantic

"[Snow] looks at the social condition so that he can see better the human condition." —Queen's Quarterly