Together, We Read
San Francisco Public Library presents Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan as its 2026 One City One Book selection. Set in a future San Francisco transformed by rising waters, this moving novel explores memory, art, caregiving, belonging and what it means to preserve a changing city.
One City One Book isn't just about reading together — it's about conversing in community. This October through December, San Francisco Public Library invites readers to explore Awake in the Floating City through conversations, creative programs, book discussions and other events across the city.
About the Book
Awake in the Floating City follows Bo, an artist who has remained behind despite much of the city being abandoned, and Mia, a 130-year-old woman who hires Bo as her caregiver. As their relationship deepens, Mia's memories draw Bo back to her art and toward the history of a city that is slowly disappearing.
"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's city is imagined, but the questions she's forced to answer aren't. In the novel, Sansome Street, Chinatown and the Public Library surface as places still worth returning to — landmarks that anchor memory even as the water surrounds them. Kwan's depicted future invites us to consider what makes a place home, and what remains when that place is transformed.
Throughout fall 2026, San Francisco Public Library invites readers to consider these questions alongside Susanna Kwan, whose work as an artist and writer explores memory, place and belonging.
Meet Susanna Kwan
Susanna Kwan is an artist and writer from San Francisco. Awake in the Floating City is her first novel.
Kwan’s work explores the relationships between people, place, memory and the natural world.
Susanna Kwan in Conversation with Becca Prowda
Hear Susanna Kwan discuss Awake in the Floating City with Becca Prowda, First Lady of San Francisco, in a conversation about the novel’s themes of memory, art, caregiving, belonging and its vision of a changing San Francisco.
December 13, 2 p.m., Main Library, Koret Auditorium, Lower Level
This program is sponsored by Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.
Upcoming Events
Explore themes of home, displacement, memory, community and adaptation with these discussion questions for Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan.
- San Francisco has been transformed by years of relentless rain, and its residents have found new ways to live with the changed landscape. Which of these adaptations felt most convincing to you? What does the novel suggest about the difference between resisting change and learning to live with it?
- Bo’s relationship with Mia becomes intertwined with her memories of her mother. How does spending time with Mia change what Bo understands about family, loss and the people who came before her?
- As automation takes over many kinds of work, caregiving remains deeply human—but technology is still part of Bo and Mia’s lives. What does the novel suggest technology can provide in a caregiving relationship, and what can it never quite replace?
- Mia carries memories of a San Francisco that no longer exists. What do the characters gain from these personal accounts of the past? What might be lost when the people who remember a place firsthand are gone?
- Climate change continually reshapes where people and animals can live. How does the novel’s treatment of migration challenge familiar ideas about permanence, belonging and what it means to have a home?
- Bo and Mia both experience forms of loneliness, but their relationship gives each of them something they are missing. What do you think they understand about one another that other people in their lives do not?
- Bo’s memorial brings together fragments of objects, images, memories and stories. What can an artwork preserve that a written history might not? Conversely, what might no memorial or archive ever be able to capture?
- The novel repeatedly asks how much of a person or a place can actually be remembered. Do Bo’s attempts to reconstruct the past bring her closer to understanding it, or do they reveal how impossible complete understanding is?
- Mia’s life is shaped by decisions that could easily have turned out differently. How does the novel’s attention to coincidence and alternate possibilities affect the way you think about the choices that shape a life?
- By the end of the novel, Bo’s ideas about the future, her past and the people who belong in her life have changed. What does she ultimately seem to need from family and community, and how has she come to define those relationships for herself?
If you liked...Awake in the Floating City
Watch and Listen
Watch and listen to One City One Book programs after the events have taken place.