In Susanna Kwan’s stunning debut novel, “Awake in the Floating City,” we encounter a San Francisco transformed by relentless rain—a city half-drowned, half-abandoned, yet stubbornly persisting beneath layers of green growth and flood waters. Through this waterlogged landscape moves Bo, a stalled artist who has lost her mother to a flood and cannot bring herself to leave, even as evacuation seems the only rational choice. When Bo receives a note from Mia, an elderly woman in her building requesting care, she finds a reason to stay—and in doing so, discovers that sometimes remaining in place can be its own act of courage.
Kwan’s prose is precise and lyrical, creating a world that feels both alien and achingly familiar. Her vision of this future San Francisco is meticulously crafted—buildings connected by narrow bridges, rooftop markets replacing street-level commerce, nature reclaiming concrete in spectacular fashion. But what makes this dystopian setting so compelling isn’t just its visual rendering but how it serves as the perfect backdrop for exploring profound questions about memory, connection, and what it means to bear witness.
A Tapestry of Time and Water
“Awake in the Floating City” moves with the fluid rhythm of its setting, flowing between present moments and memories. The seven-year deluge that has transformed San Francisco serves as both literal reality and powerful metaphor. As Bo notes while walking with Mia: “Colors went extinct with species. The palette of a place, like its ecology, kept changing.” This observation encapsulates one of the novel’s central themes—that the loss of a place involves the erasure not just of buildings and streets, but of entire ways of seeing and experiencing the world.
Kwan has constructed a narrative that resists traditional chronology, much like memory itself. Through Bo’s interactions with Mia, we discover layers of history: Mia’s journey from China during World War II, her struggles as a young immigrant in San Francisco, her complex relationship with her daughter Beverly. These stories weave into Bo’s own history, creating a rich tapestry that spans generations and continents.
The novel’s strength lies in how naturally these historical elements are incorporated. Rather than feeling like didactic interludes, Mia’s recollections of Chinatown after the 1906 earthquake or the toxic contamination of former naval yards feel organic to her character—the accumulated wisdom of someone who has witnessed a century of transformation.
Characters That Haunt Long After the Final Page
What elevates “Awake in the Floating City” beyond its dystopian premise are its deeply realized characters, particularly the relationship between Bo and Mia. Their dynamic evolves beautifully throughout the novel, moving from the formality of caregiver and client to something more profound—not quite friendship, not quite family, but a bond forged through mutual need and recognition.
Mia emerges as one of the most memorable literary characters in recent fiction. At nearly 130 years old, she’s a living archive of San Francisco history, sharp-tongued and unsentimental. Her contradictions make her deeply human—she can be cruel yet vulnerable, stubborn yet adaptable. In one particularly poignant scene, Bo finds Mia waiting alone in her best clothes for a birthday party that Bo has forgotten to attend. The quiet dignity with which Mia bears this disappointment reveals volumes about a character who has survived decades of similar abandonments.
Bo herself is a beautifully realized protagonist whose artistic block parallels her emotional stasis after her mother’s disappearance. Her journey isn’t toward dramatic epiphany but rather toward a gradual reawakening to both her creative impulses and her capacity for connection. Through her care for Mia, she begins to see that art isn’t about permanence but about bearing witness, even to that which is disappearing.
Strengths and Challenges
Kwan’s greatest triumph is her sensory evocation of this transforming city. The novel brims with moments of startling beauty: vines covering skyscrapers, footbridges swaying between buildings, the ethereal quality of light through rain. These descriptions never feel ornamental but rather essential to understanding the characters’ experiences of their shifting world.
The artistry of the novel culminates in Bo’s multimedia memorial project—a city-wide installation that projects forgotten histories onto buildings, rain, and fog. This sequence is breathtaking in its ambition and execution, perfectly embodying the novel’s themes about memory, impermanence, and the power of art to momentarily reclaim what is being lost.
If the novel has a weakness, it lies in occasional pacing issues in the middle sections. Some readers may find that certain scenes between Bo and Mia become repetitive, though others will appreciate how these quiet moments mirror the suspended quality of life in the flooded city. Additionally, some secondary characters, particularly Bo’s cousin Jenson, could benefit from further development to make their emotional stakes in Bo’s decision more resonant.
Thematic Richness and Cultural Context
“Awake in the Floating City” explores several interconnected themes with remarkable subtlety:
- Memory and preservation: How do we hold onto what matters when the physical world is washing away?
- Intergenerational trauma and resilience: Both Bo and Mia have inherited histories of survival and displacement.
- The ethics of staying versus leaving: Is Bo’s refusal to evacuate an act of courage or delusion?
- Art as witness: Can creative expression preserve what would otherwise be lost?
The novel’s engagement with Chinese American history feels particularly significant. Kwan weaves historical details—from Angel Island detentions to the I-Hotel protests—into the narrative fabric without ever reducing her characters to cultural representatives. Mia’s experiences as a Chinese immigrant woman born in the 1920s are specific and individual while also reflecting broader historical patterns.
A New Voice in Climate Fiction
“Awake in the Floating City” stands alongside works like Kim Stanley Robinson’s “New York 2140” and Omar El Akkad’s “American War” in its thoughtful engagement with climate crisis. However, Kwan’s approach is distinctive in its intimate scale and its focus on preservation rather than adaptation. This isn’t a novel about technological solutions or societal reorganization but about bearing witness to loss with clear eyes and an open heart.
Kwan’s background as an artist shines through in her detailed rendering of Bo’s creative process. The descriptions of cyanotypes, projections, and holographic installations feel authentically grounded in artistic practice while serving the emotional and thematic arc of the story.
Final Assessment
“Awake in the Floating City” is a remarkable debut that manages to be both elegiac and hopeful, intimate and expansive. Its vision of a drowning San Francisco serves as both warning and reminder of what we stand to lose—not just buildings and infrastructure, but histories, communities, and ways of seeing the world.
Despite occasional pacing issues and some underdeveloped secondary characters, the novel succeeds brilliantly in its ambitious aims. The relationship between Bo and Mia anchors the narrative, providing emotional resonance for the broader themes of memory, witness, and resilience.
In a cultural moment saturated with post-apocalyptic narratives, Kwan offers something refreshingly different—a story set not after catastrophe but during its slow unfolding. In doing so, she asks us to consider what it means to remain present and attentive even as the waters continue to rise.
For readers seeking thoughtful climate fiction, explorations of Chinese American experience, or simply beautifully crafted prose about human connection in times of crisis, “Awake in the Floating City” is a profound and necessary read. It marks Susanna Kwan as a significant new literary voice whose future work will be eagerly anticipated.
Who Should Read This Book
- Readers who appreciate literary fiction with speculative elements
- Those interested in climate fiction that focuses on emotional and cultural impacts
- Fans of multigenerational stories about immigrant experiences
- Anyone drawn to novels about art, memory, and the preservation of history
- Readers who enjoy atmospheric settings that function almost as characters themselves
“Awake in the Floating City” will resonate particularly with those who have experienced loss and found themselves seeking ways to hold onto what matters most. In Bo’s journey to honor Mia and their disappearing world, Kwan offers a moving meditation on how we might face our uncertain future—not with denial or despair, but with creativity, care, and profound attention to what remains.