Sleeping Village by Amy Balog (2017)

Website of Amy Balog

Sleeping Village by Amy Balog is a very imaginative and creative novel, more than a bit challenging to classify.  I see it as a dystopian story nestled inside of a conflicting dystopia.  It is as if you awake from a dream only to wonder if one has dreamed they have awoken.

The story is set in an isolated community, the residents have been programmed to think there are no people outside the confines of the community.  Your place in the society is pretty much determined by your birth.  

The central character, Klara , is a young woman working in a factory when we meet her.  She is a bit of a nonconformist, her parents were social reprobates, she was taken from 

them at an early age.  She is in a relationship with a young man, the rules require they marry and she breed.  She wants out of the dreary factory and has no wish to marry.  Through luck and perseverance she gets a job as a journalist for the community newspaper.  She begins to see 
things are not quite the way everyone is conditioned to believe as she seeks out interesting stories. 

The rulers of the society are treated as gods by the citizens, slowly Klara sees behind the curtain.  The problem is that she has been so deeply conditioned she does not know for sure if she can trust her perceptions.  

There are two dystopian worlds, One is a vision of western society, the other a parody.  Each one comments on and 

illuminates the other.  I don’t want to spoil this delightfully entertaining story so I am leaving out a lot.

I really enjoyed Sleeping Village and look forward to following the literary career of Amy Belog.  

I recommend Sleeping Village to all into dystopian fiction.  

                                         From the Author’s Website

Amy Balog is a Hungarian-born author of fiction, music journalist and poet based in London. Writing has been her greatest passion since the age of 12, and she has also experimented with other forms of art, including music and painting. 

Amy holds a Bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences from University of Westminster and

a Master's in Science, Technology and Society (with an emphasis on science communication) from University College London. She has previously worked as

a science journalist and later as a medical editor, before deciding to pursue music journalism. Her music website 60s Today is dedicated to the old legends, those who keep the spirit of the 60s alive and today's innovators.

She has always been drawn to the dark and incomprehensible. Her main inspiration for writing comes from surrealist art and cinema, eastern and western philosophy, and rock and alternative music. She also has a strong interest in psychology, mental illnesses and dreams. Her favourite authors include Comte du Lautréamont, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire.

She wrote her first novella, Black, White and Red, when she was 18 years old. It could be best classified as horror erotica, and it explores the darkest side of human nature. It also raises many questions about the relationship between dreams and reality. 

 She wrote her second novella, The Mirror that Lied, while studying for her undergraduate degree. It's a gothic prose poem, and its subject matter revolves around the treatment of outsiders by the masses, human evolution, madness, and the role of art and artists... 

From

https://www.amybalog.net/about

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