Iris, a museum conservator in her late forties, is separating from her husband while bringing up two daughters. Raif is a stalled academic, as uncertain of the past as he is of the future, whose girlfriend is about to move in with him. When Iris and Raif first meet by chance, Iris suddenly turns away and starts to run. She is running from what this encounter has woken in her. In the City of Love's Sleep is a contemporary story about what it means to fall in love in middle age. It charts the steps two people take towards one another and what it means to have taken those steps before.

Lavinia Greenlaw has published five collections of poetry, most recently A Double Sorrow: Troilus and Criseyde. Her first novel, Mary George of Allnorthover, received France's Prix du Premier Roman Etranger. Her two books of nonfiction are The Importance of Music to Girls and Questions of Travel: William Morris in Iceland. Her writing has appeared in frieze, the London Review of Books and the New Yorker, among other publications.