Laila Lalami’s dystopian thriller, “The Dream Hotel” (2025), has been nominated for the 2026 Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Novel.
“It’s an absolute delight to be named a finalist for the Edgar, an award previously won by luminaries like Walter Mosley, Dennis Lehane, and Attica Locke, and to share this distinction with the other writers nominated,” said Lalami, a distinguished professor of creative writing at UC Riverside.
Each year, the Mystery Writers of America (motto: "Crime doesn't pay ... enough") nominates works of crime and mystery writing for Edgar Allan Poe Awards, or Edgars, in a variety of categories. The organization’s membership includes authors of fiction and nonfiction books, screenwriters, publishers, editors, and literary agents.
In “The Dream Hotel,” a museum archivist named Sara Hussein is detained at Los Angeles International Airport by agents of the Risk Assessment Administration. Using data from her dreams, the agency’s algorithm has determined she will soon commit a violent crime. Sara is transferred to a retention facility, where she is held with others who must all prove their innocence. But with each deviation from the facility’s rules, her stay is extended. Then, one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order at the center and sending Sara on a collision course with the companies that have deprived her of her freedom.
The novel was named among the best books of 2025 by The New Yorker, NPR, The Washington Post, People, Time Magazine, and Vanity Fair.
Lalami is the author of five other books, including “The Moor’s Account” (2014), which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her novel “The Other Americans” (2019) won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction.
Lalami will discuss “The Dream Hotel” with Phoenix Alexander, the Jay Kay and Doris Klein Science Fiction Librarian, from 5:30-7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17, at the Tomás Rivera Library at UC Riverside. RSVP to reserve a spot.