India, Dec. 26 -- This feels like a time for near-future dystopias, and two of the most remarkable recent ones have been The Dream Hotel (2025), by the Moroccan-American author Laila Lalami, and Rakesfall (2024), by the Sri Lankan writer-to-watch Vajra Chandrasekera. (Rakesfall, incidentally, won this year's Ursula K Le Guin Prize.)

In the former, a final barrier has been breached. Apps are now accessing our dreams. From here, the nightmare spins out: preventive policing programmes are now using the data to detain people who have not ("yet") committed a crime, in a growing number of retention centres, that are run for profit.

The masterful novel echoes dystopian classics from Philip K Dick's Minority Report and Franz Kafka's The Trial t...