Angry Robot Books nabs Laura Elliott's horror novel on science, capitalism and chronic illness

Angry Robot Books has nabbed journalist and debut novelist Laura Elliott’s Awakened, a "surreal horror novel exploring science, capitalism, humanity, and chronic illness with shades of Greek mythology".

Simon Spanton bought world English language rights, including audio and e-book, from Caro Clarke of Portobello Literary, and the book will be published in Autumn 2025.

"A few years earlier, funded by a benevolent but misguided billionaire, a group of scientists developed a neural chip to allow us to turn off sleep," the synopsis says. It adds: "Used first by the military, those fitted with the chip developed overpowered metabolisms. Soon everyone had one. You could turn the chip off; until one day you couldn’t. Deprived of the sanity that sleep brings, the world fell apart. 

"Now, marooned in the Tower of London, in a world silent except for the distant screams of the Sleepless, a small group of surviving scientists are struggling to find a cure."

Elliott, who is writer on disability and health issues and also has ME, said: "Only a year or so after graduating University I became mostly housebound following a series of viruses. Awakened came about painstakingly afterwards, written on my notes app while lying in bed, scribbled on pieces of paper around the house, and eventually growing into a book that I often thought would never be finished. While it is a dystopia that pits humanity against the monsters they’ve created, it’s also a meditation on society’s push for productivity at the expense of an individual’s health, and the evils we might commit to save someone we love."

Spanton added: "Awakened snagged me, then haunted me. Laura’s expert plotting and gift for intense, dreamlike flights of terror kept me locked into the fraught lives of her characters as the true nature of the horror they, and we, face was slowly revealed. I loved that the real waking nightmare at the centre of the book is all too real. It’s so exciting for Angry Robot to have the prospect of introducing such a fantastic new talent to readers.”

Clarke commented: "The most original and thought-provoking speculative fiction at the moment is coming from disabled and chronically ill writers who challenge our expectations of what a future can look like if we continue on this path. I couldn’t be more excited to partner with the Angry Robot team to launch this bright new voice!”