THE CAPITAL OF DREAMS

A young girl becomes a refugee in her own land in this fairy tale–adjacent bildungsroman.

When war comes to the small, idiosyncratic country of Elysia, no one is quite surprised, but neither are they prepared. For Sofia Bottom-Zier, the pampered young daughter of Elysian’s leading intellectual, the time between the Enemy’s invasion of their country’s borders and their inevitable march on the Capital has been a pleasurable interlude of intrigue, drama, and a renewed closeness to her difficult and mercurial mother, Clara. This comes to an end when the Enemy announces that they will allow all Elysian children safe passage out of the Capital on a special train, and Clara hastens to make sure Sofia is on it. Sofia’s safety is not Clara’s primary concern, however. Her much larger goal is to smuggle out the manuscript she has written and concealed inside Sofia’s suitcase, which she hopes will convey to the Western world that the country of Elysia is worth saving. “Of course the book is more important than you,” Clara tells her daughter. “It’s my memoir, yes. But it’s more important than me. It’s the celebration of an Elysian life. What are any of us except expendable during a war? It’s the idea of freedom that has to be saved.” With that admonition ringing in her ears, Sofia boards the Children’s Train heading toward the vague safety of “the countryside.” It soon becomes clear, however, that the Enemy has no intention of rescuing the children, and is instead shipping them to their executions. Sofia escapes, but in the commotion, she loses track of the suitcase with her mother’s manuscript inside. Accompanied by the Goose, a “public intellectual” who is also an actual goose with big dreams of a future in the Capital, Sofia sets off across the war-torn landscape of her erstwhile country in search of the Black Market—a near-mythical place where everything “illegal and forbidden and delightful ended up,” including, Sofia hopes, her mother’s manuscript, and the country’s potential salvation. The novel is told in fairy tale cadence and peppered with sophisticated animals, sensitive objects, and the enduring magic of folklore forests; its raw power lies in the way it blends the realities of war with the equally trenchant realities of its child narrator’s perspective as she navigates her suddenly irredeemable world.

A powerful novel—heartbreaking, magical, and real.