The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

The Dream Hotel is a work of speculative fiction set in the near future in a society that abandoned privacy for security. After a mass shooting at a Super Bowl half time, people allowed mass data collection that a crime prediction algorithm will use to identify citizens likely to commit crimes. Everything digital is harvested and used by the algorithm.This includes dreams. Someone you haven’t seen for 20 years did something, it will be linked to you by the algorithm.

Sara Hussein, a Moroccan‑American wife and mother is flagged at the airport upon returning to the US. Her risk score is above 500 and the algorithm reports that she is likely to murder her husband. People flagged as a risk are shunted off to retention centers for a two week (supposedly) quarantine to make sure they aren’t a danger. The center is ironically referred to as a hotel and a nightmare can have a disastrous effect. Sara finds herself in a bureaucratic Kafkaesque nightmare that appears rigged to keep her at the retention center as long as possible.You see the retention centers are privately run and it’s to the company’s advantage to keep retainees and monetize everything it can.

Sara is not able to keep her head down and her two weeks quarantine becomes months as points are arbitrarily added to her score.

Obvious themes here are the dangers of sacrificing privacy for security and privatizing detention facilities. But within this bureaucratic structure is the real core of the novel, the relationships among the women in the center. There is a real Orange is the New Black vibe here as the women find a collective strength with Sara at the heart. Apologies if you haven’t seen Orange…, but there is a character that made me think of Pornstache striding through the dormitory handing out demerits.

This is a beautifully written story of resilience, friendship, and strength. The reader cares about the characters who are all treated as individuals.

Highly recommended.