
Awake in the Floating City
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Pre-order for $19.80
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Catherine Ho
-
By:
-
Susanna Kwan
About this listen
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FROM PEOPLE MAGAZINE • An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.
"An astonishing work of art...This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake."—Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans
Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.
Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.
©2025 Susanna Kwan (P)2025 Random House AudioCritic reviews
A Most Anticipated Book of the Year from People, San Francisco Chronicle, Electric Literature, Axios San Francisco, 7x7, and HeatMap
"[A] tender, speculative novel that imagines [Kwan's] home city flooded and largely abandoned—and how two of its last remaining residents find unlikely connection in disaster."—San Francisco Chronicle
"Awake in the Floating City is an astonishing work of art, rich with attention, patience, and love: the rare elegy that hums with hope, and makes the strongest case I’ve ever read for remembering the people and places that matter to us. Kwan’s prose pulses with uncommon attention to the natural world, attuned to both its beauty and devastation. This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake."—Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans
“What book is like this? What post-apocalyptic vision dares be so gorgeous, lush, struck with humor and light, so warm and caring and care-taking? Luminous, wise, Susanna Kwan's story of a flooded future San Francisco expands the known world, making room within its unbearable devastation for beauty, compassion, and love. This book is a labor undertaken by an imagination able to mourn and celebrate in the same breath. An argument runs through it, like a bright live wire, that to attend to loss—to hold the dying world's hand and say, ‘I'm here’—is a way to be fully alive. And so it is an argument for life.”—Meng Jin, author of Little Gods
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Incandescent
- By: Emily Tesh
- Narrated by: Zara Ramm
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walden is good at her job—no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from—is herself.
By: Emily Tesh
-
Where the Axe Is Buried
- A Novel
- By: Ray Nayler
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. Meanwhile, on the fringes of a Western Europe that has renounced human governance in favor of ostensibly more efficient, objective, and peaceful AI Prime Ministers, an experimental artificial mind is malfunctioning, threatening to set off a chain of events that may spell the end of the Western world.
By: Ray Nayler
-
Silver Elite
- Silver Elite, Book 1
- By: Dani Francis
- Narrated by: Amanda Dolan
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wren Darlington has spent her whole life in hiding, honing her psychic abilities and aiding the rebel Uprising in small ways. On the Continent, being Modified means certain death—and Wren is one of the most powerful Mods in existence. When one careless mistake places her in the hands of the enemy and she’s forced to join their most elite training program, she’s finally handed the perfect opportunity to strike a devastating blow from inside their ranks.
By: Dani Francis
-
Polybius
- By: Collin Armstrong
- Narrated by: Rachanee Lumayno
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
October, 1982. Forced to move to the quiet seaside town of Tasker Bay by her mother, the only thing on high schooler Andi’s mind is saving up enough money to return to her old stomping grounds in Silicon Valley. Her self-taught skills with all things electronic make her a perfect fit for a job at the dingy local arcade. When Polybius—a new game of unknown origin arrives—the shop is suddenly overwhelmed with players fighting for time on the machine. Seemingly overnight, a virus-like epidemic grips Tasker Bay while a violent coastal storm rolls in, isolating it from the outside world.
By: Collin Armstrong
-
Immaculate Conception
- A Novel
- By: Ling Ling Huang
- Narrated by: Carolyn Kang
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Enka meets Mathilde in art school and is instantly drawn to her. Mathilde makes art that feels truly original, and Enka—trying hard to prove herself in this fiercely competitive world—pours everything into their friendship. But when Mathilde’s fame and success cause her to begin drifting away, Enka becomes desperate to keep her close.
By: Ling Ling Huang
-
Overgrowth
- By: Mira Grant
- Narrated by: Caitlin Kelly
- Length: 17 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since she was three years old, Anastasia Miller has been telling anyone who would listen that she's an alien disguised as a human being, and that the armada that left her on Earth is coming for her. Since she was three years old, no one has been willing to listen. Now, with an alien signal from the stars being broadcast around the world, humanity is finally starting to realize that it's already been warned, and it may be too late.
By: Mira Grant
-
The Incandescent
- By: Emily Tesh
- Narrated by: Zara Ramm
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walden is good at her job—no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from—is herself.
By: Emily Tesh
-
Where the Axe Is Buried
- A Novel
- By: Ray Nayler
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. Meanwhile, on the fringes of a Western Europe that has renounced human governance in favor of ostensibly more efficient, objective, and peaceful AI Prime Ministers, an experimental artificial mind is malfunctioning, threatening to set off a chain of events that may spell the end of the Western world.
By: Ray Nayler
-
Silver Elite
- Silver Elite, Book 1
- By: Dani Francis
- Narrated by: Amanda Dolan
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wren Darlington has spent her whole life in hiding, honing her psychic abilities and aiding the rebel Uprising in small ways. On the Continent, being Modified means certain death—and Wren is one of the most powerful Mods in existence. When one careless mistake places her in the hands of the enemy and she’s forced to join their most elite training program, she’s finally handed the perfect opportunity to strike a devastating blow from inside their ranks.
By: Dani Francis
-
Polybius
- By: Collin Armstrong
- Narrated by: Rachanee Lumayno
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
October, 1982. Forced to move to the quiet seaside town of Tasker Bay by her mother, the only thing on high schooler Andi’s mind is saving up enough money to return to her old stomping grounds in Silicon Valley. Her self-taught skills with all things electronic make her a perfect fit for a job at the dingy local arcade. When Polybius—a new game of unknown origin arrives—the shop is suddenly overwhelmed with players fighting for time on the machine. Seemingly overnight, a virus-like epidemic grips Tasker Bay while a violent coastal storm rolls in, isolating it from the outside world.
By: Collin Armstrong
-
Immaculate Conception
- A Novel
- By: Ling Ling Huang
- Narrated by: Carolyn Kang
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Enka meets Mathilde in art school and is instantly drawn to her. Mathilde makes art that feels truly original, and Enka—trying hard to prove herself in this fiercely competitive world—pours everything into their friendship. But when Mathilde’s fame and success cause her to begin drifting away, Enka becomes desperate to keep her close.
By: Ling Ling Huang
-
Overgrowth
- By: Mira Grant
- Narrated by: Caitlin Kelly
- Length: 17 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since she was three years old, Anastasia Miller has been telling anyone who would listen that she's an alien disguised as a human being, and that the armada that left her on Earth is coming for her. Since she was three years old, no one has been willing to listen. Now, with an alien signal from the stars being broadcast around the world, humanity is finally starting to realize that it's already been warned, and it may be too late.
By: Mira Grant
-
Wearing the Lion
- By: John Wiswell
- Narrated by: Christian Black, Elizabeth Klett
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nebula Award-winning author of Someone You Can Build a Nest In John Wiswell brings a humanizing and humorous touch to the Hercules story, forever changing the way we understand the man behind the myth—and the goddess reluctantly bound to him.
By: John Wiswell
-
Metallic Realms
- A Novel
- By: Lincoln Michel
- Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Perennially single, socially awkward, and drowning in debt, Michael Lincoln’s life has turned out nothing like the intergalactic pulp heroes of his youth. But these are pedestrian concerns—he has a greater calling, and that is to preserve for all posterity the greatest series in the history of the written word: The Star Rot Chronicles. Written collectively by Michael’s best (and perhaps only) friend Taras K. Castle and his misfit sci-fi writing group, the Orb 4, the stories follow Captain Baldwin and his fearless crew on their mind-bending adventures across the Metallic Realms.
By: Lincoln Michel
-
Friends of the Museum
- A Novel
- By: Heather McGowan
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 19 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Diane Schwebe, the director of a major New York museum, is awakened in the early morning by a text message from the museum’s lawyer, it is the start of a twenty-four hour roller-coaster ride. Diane has sacrificed many things in her life to help the fading institution stave off irrelevance and financial ruin. In this battle, she’s surrounded by her stalwart supporters and a motley assortment of museum employees, each on the precipice of collapse or revelation.
By: Heather McGowan
-
Behooved
- By: M. Stevenson
- Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A charming slow-burn romantasy featuring a duty-bound noblewoman with a chronic illness, a prince who would rather be in a library than on a throne, and a magical ride through a world of cozy enchantment.
By: M. Stevenson
-
The Sirens
- A Novel
- By: Emilia Hart
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
2019: Lucy awakens from a dream to find her hands around her ex-lover’s throat. Horrified, she flees to her older sister’s house on the Australian coast, hoping she can help explain the strangely vivid nightmare that preceded the attack—but Jess is nowhere to be found. As Lucy awaits her return, the rumors surrounding Jess’s strange small town start to emerge. Numerous men have gone missing at sea, spread over decades. A tiny baby was found hidden in a cave. And sailors tell of hearing women’s voices on the waves.
-
-
Absurd!!
- By Lila on 04-17-25
By: Emilia Hart
-
Cold Eternity
- By: S.A. Barnes
- Narrated by: Amara Jasper
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Halley is on the run from an interplanetary political scandal that has put a huge target on her back. She heads for what seems like the perfect place to lay low: a gigantic space barge storing the cryogenically frozen bodies of Earth’s most fortunate citizens from more than a century ago… The cryo program, created by trillionaire tech genius Zale Winfeld, is long defunct, and the AI hologram "hosts," ghoulishly created in the likeness of Winfeld’s three adult children, are glitchy. The ship feels like a crypt, and the isolation gets to Halley almost immediately.
-
-
Speechless
- By Shelby ecker on 04-09-25
By: S.A. Barnes
-
Shroud
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: Sophie Aldred
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a planet shrouded in darkness, a stranded crew must fight for survival. But, the darkness may have plans of its own in this wildly original story from Adrian Tchaikovsky, Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke Award–winning author of Children of Time.
-
The Emperor of Gladness
- A Novel
- By: Ocean Vuong
- Narrated by: James Aaron Oh
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak.
By: Ocean Vuong
-
Killer Potential
- A Novel
- By: Hannah Deitch
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh, Daru Oda
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A scholarship kid with straight As and big dreams, Evie Gordon always thought she was special, that she’d be someone. But after graduating from an elite university, she finds herself drowning in debt and working as an SAT tutor for the super-rich of Los Angeles. Everything changes one Sunday, when she arrives for her weekly lesson at the Victors’ Beverly Hills estate and, in lieu of a bored teenager, finds the bloody remains of the parents strewn through their beautiful back garden, and a woman crying for help within a closet.
-
-
Excellent!
- By Sarah M. on 04-06-25
By: Hannah Deitch
-
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
- By: V. E. Schwab
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Katie Leung, Marisa Calin
- Length: 18 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532. London, 1827. Boston, 2019. Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots. One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild. And all of them grow teeth.
By: V. E. Schwab
-
This Book Will Bury Me
- A Novel
- By: Ashley Winstead
- Narrated by: Leslie Howard
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After the unexpected death of her father, college student Jane Sharp longs for a distraction from her grief. She becomes obsessed with true crime, befriending armchair detectives who teach her how to hunt killers from afar. In this morbid internet underground, Jane finds friendship, purpose, and even glory . . .So when news of the shocking deaths of three college girls in Delphine, Idaho, takes the world by storm, and sleuths everywhere race to solve the crimes, Jane and her friends are determined to beat them.
-
-
Worth it
- By Pepperoni on 04-17-25
By: Ashley Winstead
-
The River Has Roots
- By: Amal El-Mohtar
- Narrated by: Gem Carmella
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family. There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees. But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk…
-
-
Fantastic production!
- By Nada Jovicin on 04-18-25
By: Amal El-Mohtar