What Happens at Night

***A SPECTATOR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021***

"An intriguing, memorable book."―The Times

"Like a Kafka story and a Wes Anderson movie combined."―Literary Hub 



"Terrifying, comic and heart-breaking."—Sigrid Nunez

"This beautifully written and wonderfully droll novel brilliantly captures the frustrations and unease of being in a foreign environment."—The Spectator 



"Full of foreboding, What Happens At Night draws the reader on without questioning. A rich experience."―Literary Review



A couple travel to a strange, snowy European city to adopt a baby, who they hope will resurrect their failing marriage. Their difficult journey leaves the wife desperately weak, and her husband worries that her apparent illness will prevent the orphanage from releasing their child.



The couple check into the cavernous and eerily deserted Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel where they are both helped and hampered by the people they encounter: an ancient, flamboyant chanteuse, a debauched businessman, an enigmatic faith healer, and a stoical bartender who dispenses an addictive, lichen-flavoured schnapps. 



Nothing is as it seems in this baffling, frozen world, and the longer the couple endure the punishing cold the less they seem to know about their marriage, themselves, and even life itself.



Peter Cameron is the author of several novels, including Andorra, The Weekend, and Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Rolling Stone, and many other literary journals. Merchant Ivory made a film based on his novel The City of Your Final Destination. He lives in New York City and Vermont.



“An intriguing, memorable book.”



"This beautifully written and wonderfully droll novel brilliantly captures the frustrations and unease of being in a foreign environment."



“Full of foreboding, What Happens At Night draws the reader on without questioning. A rich experience."



“A snow-swept journey to the ends of the Earth continues Cameron's exploration of defamiliarized landscapes and the intricacies of human relationships… A dreamy fable confronting love, death, and our inevitable inadequacy yet persistence in the face of both.”



“Like a Kafka story and a Wes Anderson movie combined, if you can wrap your brain around that. Suffice to say: it's great.”



“This beautifully eerie tale of desire and death goes down like an icy shot of schnapps: first it burns you with its chill, then it ignites in you a lingering fire… Cameron reveals himself to be a master at portraying grief and despair, longing and love.”



"What Happens at Night retools the Victorian ghost story . . . the novel's indeterminacy is both intriguing and moving, because it means that one character's loss is another's consummation, and an unbroken night is both a source of terror and the condition of a long-desired resting place."



“[A] dreamlike, resonant fable… Cameron doles out the right amount of eeriness and eccentricity.”



“A menacing, suspenseful novel . . . will keep readers on tenterhooks, wondering how the tension will break.”



“Thrillingly mysterious and gorgeously written.”



“A surreal, funny, heart-breaking story about love and mortality.”



“This book is a masterpiece. [...] Unique, unexpected, unforgettable.”



“So beautiful and so unnerving, so poised between miracle and disaster.”