Shortlisted for the Climate Fiction Prize 2026 -  a climate fiction novel with a dystopian world as its setting and at its heart is a human story about compassion in times of great adversity - for fans of Station Eleven and Birnam Wood. ‘Susanna Kwan writes climate change into the grain of ordinary life, allowing us into the intimate world of loss, love and attention’ Kit de Waal, Climate Fiction Prize judge commented on Awake in the Floating City‘An astonishing work of art...This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake’ Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans‘Gorgeous, lush, struck with humor and light, so warm, caring and care-taking, luminous and wise’ Meng Jin, author of Little GodsIn a future San Francisco transformed by years of rain, Bo, a 40-year-old lapsed artist, is grieving the community she’s lost to catastrophic flooding. Her friends and family have disappeared or fled, the streets are rivers, and the buildings are falling apart.    Yet on the day of her planned departure, Bo finds a note slipped under her door: ‘I need help’, it reads. ‘Three days a week, afternoons. Can pay in cash.’       Unable to bring herself to board the ship that could save her life, Bo instead chooses to answer the note, which turns out to have been written by her neighbour Mia, a 130-year-old “supercentenarian” long abandoned by her own family.

LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave. "An astonishing work of art...This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake." —Rachel Khong, author of Real AmericansBo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.

For fans of Station Eleven or Birnam Wood a literary novel with a dystopian world as its setting and at its heart is a human story about compassion in times of great adversity.‘An astonishing work of art...This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake’ Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans‘Gorgeous, lush, struck with humor and light, so warm, caring and care-taking, luminous and wise’ Meng Jin, author of Little GodsIn a future San Francisco transformed by years of rain, Bo, a 40-year-old lapsed artist, is grieving the community she’s lost to catastrophic flooding. Her friends and family have disappeared or fled, the streets are rivers, and the buildings are falling apart.    Yet on the day of her planned departure, Bo finds a note slipped under her door: ‘I need help’, it reads. ‘Three days a week, afternoons. Can pay in cash.’       Unable to bring herself to board the ship that could save her life, Bo instead chooses to answer the note, which turns out to have been written by her neighbour Mia, a 130-year-old “supercentenarian” long abandoned by her own family.

For fans of Station Eleven or Birnam Wood a literary novel with a dystopian world as its setting and at its heart is a human story about compassion in times of great adversity.‘An astonishing work of art...This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake’ Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans‘Gorgeous, lush, struck with humor and light, so warm, caring and care-taking, luminous and wise’ Meng Jin, author of Little GodsIn a future San Francisco transformed by years of rain, Bo, a 40-year-old lapsed artist, is grieving the community she’s lost to catastrophic flooding. Her friends and family have disappeared or fled, the streets are rivers, and the buildings are falling apart.    Yet on the day of her planned departure, Bo finds a note slipped under her door: ‘I need help’, it reads. ‘Three days a week, afternoons. Can pay in cash.’       Unable to bring herself to board the ship that could save her life, Bo instead chooses to answer the note, which turns out to have been written by her neighbour Mia, a 130-year-old “supercentenarian” long abandoned by her own family.

For fans of Station Eleven or Birnam Wood a literary novel with a dystopian world as its setting and at its heart is a human story about compassion in times of great adversity.   In a future San Francisco transformed by years of rain, Bo, a 40-year-old lapsed artist, is grieving the community she’s lost to catastrophic flooding.  Her friends and family have disappeared or fled, the streets are rivers, and the buildings are falling apart.    Yet on the day of her planned departure, Bo finds a note slipped under her door: I need help, it reads. Three days a week, afternoons. Can pay in cash.    Unable to bring herself to board the ship that could save her life, Bo instead chooses to answer the note, which turns out to have been written by her neighbour Mia, a 130-year-old “supercentenarian” long abandoned by her own family.   

Shortlisted for the Climate Fiction Prize 2026 -  a climate fiction novel with a dystopian world as its setting and at its heart is a human story about compassion in times of great adversity - for fans of Station Eleven and Birnam Wood. ‘Susanna Kwan writes climate change into the grain of ordinary life, allowing us into the intimate world of loss, love and attention’ Kit de Waal, Climate Fiction Prize judge commented on Awake in the Floating City‘An astonishing work of art...This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake’ Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans‘Gorgeous, lush, struck with humor and light, so warm, caring and care-taking, luminous and wise’ Meng Jin, author of Little GodsIn a future San Francisco transformed by years of rain, Bo, a 40-year-old lapsed artist, is grieving the community she’s lost to catastrophic flooding. Her friends and family have disappeared or fled, the streets are rivers, and the buildings are falling apart.    Yet on the day of her planned departure, Bo finds a note slipped under her door: ‘I need help’, it reads. ‘Three days a week, afternoons. Can pay in cash.’       Unable to bring herself to board the ship that could save her life, Bo instead chooses to answer the note, which turns out to have been written by her neighbour Mia, a 130-year-old “supercentenarian” long abandoned by her own family.

LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave. "An astonishing work of art...This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake." —Rachel Khong, author of Real AmericansBo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.

For fans of Station Eleven or Birnam Wood a literary novel with a dystopian world as its setting and at its heart is a human story about compassion in times of great adversity.‘An astonishing work of art...This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake’ Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans‘Gorgeous, lush, struck with humor and light, so warm, caring and care-taking, luminous and wise’ Meng Jin, author of Little GodsIn a future San Francisco transformed by years of rain, Bo, a 40-year-old lapsed artist, is grieving the community she’s lost to catastrophic flooding. Her friends and family have disappeared or fled, the streets are rivers, and the buildings are falling apart.    Yet on the day of her planned departure, Bo finds a note slipped under her door: ‘I need help’, it reads. ‘Three days a week, afternoons. Can pay in cash.’       Unable to bring herself to board the ship that could save her life, Bo instead chooses to answer the note, which turns out to have been written by her neighbour Mia, a 130-year-old “supercentenarian” long abandoned by her own family.

For fans of Station Eleven or Birnam Wood a literary novel with a dystopian world as its setting and at its heart is a human story about compassion in times of great adversity.‘An astonishing work of art...This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake’ Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans‘Gorgeous, lush, struck with humor and light, so warm, caring and care-taking, luminous and wise’ Meng Jin, author of Little GodsIn a future San Francisco transformed by years of rain, Bo, a 40-year-old lapsed artist, is grieving the community she’s lost to catastrophic flooding. Her friends and family have disappeared or fled, the streets are rivers, and the buildings are falling apart.    Yet on the day of her planned departure, Bo finds a note slipped under her door: ‘I need help’, it reads. ‘Three days a week, afternoons. Can pay in cash.’       Unable to bring herself to board the ship that could save her life, Bo instead chooses to answer the note, which turns out to have been written by her neighbour Mia, a 130-year-old “supercentenarian” long abandoned by her own family.

For fans of Station Eleven or Birnam Wood a literary novel with a dystopian world as its setting and at its heart is a human story about compassion in times of great adversity.   In a future San Francisco transformed by years of rain, Bo, a 40-year-old lapsed artist, is grieving the community she’s lost to catastrophic flooding.  Her friends and family have disappeared or fled, the streets are rivers, and the buildings are falling apart.    Yet on the day of her planned departure, Bo finds a note slipped under her door: I need help, it reads. Three days a week, afternoons. Can pay in cash.    Unable to bring herself to board the ship that could save her life, Bo instead chooses to answer the note, which turns out to have been written by her neighbour Mia, a 130-year-old “supercentenarian” long abandoned by her own family.