Alan Bilton

The Sleepwalkers' Ball Alan Bilton

Hans is a dreamer, a waiter, a security guard, a young man tending elderly parents, a layabout, an old man scribbling his memories. Driven out in his pajamas into a strangely black and white Scottish town, Hans sets off in search of both his girl and the one mysterious thing that will solve the riddle of his life. Clara is the art school girl with the lovely round face and ants in her pants, the crazy girl from the pub, always hindered by luggage or her dodgy innards, the sleepy waitress at the ball in the castle grounds, the blowzy dame with the world's most beautiful mouth. But can they find each other in time? This beautifully surreal romantic comedy combines the forms of the silent film and the Gothic city ghost tour. A cross between Kafka and Mary Poppins, it is filmic, funny, and lyrical in turns. Always moving, it follows two lives: a man and a woman, and their many attempts to find each other. Alan Bilton teaches American Studies at Swansea University. His nonfiction titles are An Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction and the three-volume (co-authored) America in the 1920s.