Description

‘Who is to say dreams are insubstantial when whole lives can be lived in their pursuit?’

When an office worker receives a mysterious device promising to transport her to a parallel universe, she assumes it is just another marketing stunt. That night, she visits a fantastical place in her dreams; on waking she returns to her normal life, only to return to the same dream the following night.

At first she finds the ongoing dreams bizarre, but the more time she spends in the dream world, the less she wants to wake up. Yet as her fantasy begins to encroach on her waking life, dream and reality collide with drastic consequences.

With sharp insight, wry humour and Black Mirror-esque themes, Red Dust, White Snow highlights the blurring of reality and fantasy in our increasingly virtual world.

Publisher Review

'Caught between the tense strictures of a dystopian future and ever-thrilling flights into an imagined past, Pan Huiting's 'Red Dust, White Snow' is a dizzying, inventive, page-turning debut' -Daryl Qilin Yam, author of 'Lovelier, Lonelier', nominated for the 2023 Dublin Literary Prize; ''Red Dust, White Snow' is a work of sprawling imagination and luminous writing. Full of heady oneiric visions, it takes you into a world that's both recognisable and familiar, and also uncannily strange. A wild ride, it marks Pan Huiting out as a real talent to watch' -Eli Lee, author of 'A Strange and Brilliant Light', winner of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain's Best First Novel Award; 'An eerie, engaging, extended parable about the launch of a dreamworld, and the longings it mirrors of the all-too-real world we live in now' -Gwyneth Jones, author of 'Bold as Love', winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award; 'Tantalizing, poignant and compelling, Pan Huiting's 'Red Dust, White Snow' is a luminous spell of a novel about the escapes of technology that delivered me firmly and thrillingly back into myself' -Katie Williams, author of 'Tell the Machine Goodnight'; Dreamlike, playful, lush. Pan Huiting manages to depict the dangers and pleasures of a life lived online without finger-wagging or condescending' -Lynda Clark, author of 'Beyond Kidding' and 'Dreaming in Quantum'; 'Invoking the social alienation of Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Huiting creates a world whose characters search desperately for self in an ever-more-virtual landscape. Red Dust, White Snow holds a mirror up to the imaginary lives that captivate and enslave us - then forces us to look' -Carole Stivers, author of 'The Mother Code';