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Dreams of Leaving
New Egypt is a village somewhere in the south of England. A village that nobody has ever left. Peach, the sadistic chief of police, makes sure of that. Then, one misty morning, a young couple secretly set their baby son Moses afloat on the river, in a basket made of rushes. Years later, Moses is living above a nightclub, mixing with drug-dealers, thieves and topless waitresses. He knows nothing about his past - but it is catching up with him nevertheless, and it threatens to put his life in danger. Terror, magic and farce all have a part to play as the worlds of Peach and Moses slowly converge.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
21 people are currently reading
649 people want to read
About the author
Rupert Thomson
34 books314 followersRupert Thomson, (born November 5, 1955) is an English writer. He is the author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels and an award-winning memoir. He has lived in many cities around the world, including Athens, Berlin, New York, Sydney, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Rome. In 2010, after several years in Barcelona, he moved back to London. He has contributed to the Financial Times, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, Granta, and the Independent.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
September 25, 2017
Quite an interesting plot. The way he has written and explained the plot it's very interesting. There are moments when you're just into the book and there are some dull moments as well. I would say the ending didn't blow me away and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Nothing which can make you question the writer but something which will leave you imagining a lot of things. The read is interesting, I must say!
February 19, 2014
Absolutely loved this! It's sad and beautiful and funny.
The characters are wonderful and you feel like you actually know them and properly care about them. It's a book about family and what that means and about growing up and changing.
Highly recommended
The characters are wonderful and you feel like you actually know them and properly care about them. It's a book about family and what that means and about growing up and changing.
Highly recommended
January 2, 2015
one of the most amazing stories I've read
December 14, 2014
The writing throughout is brilliant, with some of the most arresting similes you'll find. Rarely is a book so uneven. The New Egypt bits are an inventive dystopia and much more could have been made of this. I didn't care about the hedonistic flaky characters Moses meets in the world outside New Egypt. This isn't the only book by this author that has this problem, both Divided Kingdom and The Insult have brilliant ideas but dissipate away into characters literally wandering aimlessly. On the evidence of this book and some others he has very good ideas but is unable to sustain them over a whole novel.
May 12, 2010
One of my favorite novels of all time. I'll read and re-read anything by Rupert Thomson; he's that good.
August 5, 2010
This was the first rupert thomson i ever read and i've probably re-read it five or six times. beautiful book.
January 14, 2018
My entry to Thomson. A good place to begin.
June 20, 2018
I had to give this book 5 stars i have discovered the most wonderful writer. Somebody described his writing to Me like a box of wonderful chocolates and that is correct. The writer transports you to another world his characters are so strong his writings is stunning the book is just wonderful.
Now like a box of chocolates you wouldn’t want to eat them every night so I don’t need to go straight on to another one of his books. I need a gap but my aim is to read all of his books.
Now like a box of chocolates you wouldn’t want to eat them every night so I don’t need to go straight on to another one of his books. I need a gap but my aim is to read all of his books.
May 10, 2014
This is the book that got me in to RT. The only author I buy in hardback, rather than wait for the paperback!
June 16, 2013
Thomson's first novel and the second of his novels I’ve read. It was his writing alone that kept me interested for more than 400 pages. The beginning, about a village whose police officers have prevented any contact with the outside world, is fantastic, but the other story, about the adult life of a baby who was sent out of the village by his father, didn’t interest me much. The fact that Thomson’s writing could keep me going is truly amazing.
Thomson is very talented. It's too bad Thomson, with nine long novels and only 57, is not better known and respected in the U.S. In fact, his new novel (2013) isn't even available here.
Thomson is very talented. It's too bad Thomson, with nine long novels and only 57, is not better known and respected in the U.S. In fact, his new novel (2013) isn't even available here.
April 26, 2011
It all starts out so well... The first 150 pages or so are great: a gripping idea, for the most part very well executed, and with likable, convincing, interesting characters. But then that's it - the quality ends there.
There are things that Thomson does very well here: England, boisterous young men, and those small ideas and observations that can be used to good effect to make writing that bit more writerly... You know the ones I mean.
But he also doesn't know how much is too much when it comes to inventing pointless excursions for his characters, he resorts to simple coincidence far too often, he lets main characters fall by the wayside and introduces new ones seemingly for no reason, he ties things up in too much of a hurry, and - oh yeah - he doesn't seem to think that the final 200 pages or so require any kind of a point or any plot development.
I stuck with it for the final two-thirds because I very much liked the set-up, and I hoped it would return to something like that kind of quality. It didn't. No more Thomson for me.
There are things that Thomson does very well here: England, boisterous young men, and those small ideas and observations that can be used to good effect to make writing that bit more writerly... You know the ones I mean.
But he also doesn't know how much is too much when it comes to inventing pointless excursions for his characters, he resorts to simple coincidence far too often, he lets main characters fall by the wayside and introduces new ones seemingly for no reason, he ties things up in too much of a hurry, and - oh yeah - he doesn't seem to think that the final 200 pages or so require any kind of a point or any plot development.
I stuck with it for the final two-thirds because I very much liked the set-up, and I hoped it would return to something like that kind of quality. It didn't. No more Thomson for me.
January 12, 2012
This is Thomson's first, and I think his best work. That's probably not what a writer wants to hear, and don't get me wrong, he's written some great books, but this one just worked on a different level. Thomson is all about creating a parallel world, recognisable, in many ways as mundane and confused at the real one, but always with a few nice, weird differences. In Dreams of Leaving, he creates this little village in Sussex ( I spent a lot of the book looking for clues exactly where it was, 'cos it was pretty damn close to Lewes, my home town) where the inhabitants are powerless to leave, living under the control of insane police chief Peach. Moses, the hero, was smuggled out as a baby by his parents, and the book is his journey to find the truth behind his strange history. As with all Thomson's writing, the beauty is in his exquisite descriptions; whether its the natural world or the urban shit-scape, he nails it every time.
March 8, 2013
I loved this book and recommend it to as many people as I possibly can. The characters in here are brilliant! Especially Moses and George Highness.
I can't begin to do the author any justice by trying to explain what the book is about, it's just a fantastic story. Read it please!!
I can't begin to do the author any justice by trying to explain what the book is about, it's just a fantastic story. Read it please!!
July 21, 2021
I was leaning toward a 5, but then there would be another repetitive bout of drinking and using. Those sections didn't contribute to the story.
November 25, 2024
I first picked this up in hardback in 1987 after reading a glowing review in The Guardian. I was excited about it but I abandoned it after about thirty or forty pages because it wasn’t the novel I wanted it to be.
Looking through my journal of that year I see there were such seismic disturbances in my life that I’m surprised I found time to read anything at all. Perhaps it wasn’t the novel’s fault but mine. So I decided to acquire another copy of it — nostalgia prompted me to buy the same first hardback edition — and make a fresh attempt.
I felt the same disappointment and nearly abandoned it again but I was determined this time to find some value in it. There must have been a deep psychological reason why I’d bought it twice. I had to find out what it was.
I can relate to the theme. It tells the story of Moses, who is born to a couple in a small fictional village in Sussex where the entire population is held captive by a vindictive police force. They dream only of escape. Many of them do try to escape using contraptions and schemes that are reminiscent of some of the more bizarre escape attempts made by people in East Berlin. But none of them succeed.
Life in this village, called New Egypt, is surreal. Unlike in East Berlin, there is no wall. But, like old Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs, there is a river with a bank that is shielded from view by a thick screen of rushes. Moses’s father uses the rushes to make a basket, puts Moses in it and sets him adrift.
Twenty-five years later Moses turns up at a “Building of Many Colours” in south east London where he takes up residence on the top floor above a night club called The Bunker. He is drifting through life, searching for meaning and a sense of identity.
Moses meets a girl at a party and he is instantly attracted to her because her eyebrows say “quarter to two”. She is a singer called Gloria and he decides he can’t let this opportunity pass because he once refused to take a mandarin from a girl on Bond Street and has regretted the missed opportunity ever since.
The narrative is filled with these kinds of images. There are many unusual similes and metaphors. A handkerchief balled in the palm of a hand can be “like a confession.” The fluttering of napkins in a restaurant can be “as if two white birds had spread their wings only to discover that they couldn’t fly.”
Sometimes a poetic image works brilliantly and provides symbolic emphasis of how two characters stand in relation to one another. But it can be let down in the same paragraph by an idea that is faintly ridiculous.
The relationship with Gloria ends not because of any change in Gloria’s face but because Moses loses interest in her after he discovers that she comes from a background of wealth and privilege that is way out of his league. This version of events is unexplored and vanishes into the distance as the plot moves on towards a second romantic entanglement between Moses and a married older woman called Mary. The names, like much else in the novel, are suggestive but do little to give the characters any depth.
Back in the village of New Egypt, Chief Inspector Peach, who is convinced that Moses is still alive, is plotting to hunt him down and bring him to justice.
Meanwhile the poetry continues when Moses and Mary take a trip to the coast.
The sensibility that observes the surface of things rarely looks deeper. There are very few attempts to describe why things happen or to explore the motives and inner lives of the characters. The ultimate joy for the protagonists, when they are not having sex, or even sometimes when they are, is to blunt their feelings and lose consciousness.
Sometimes the descriptions are as empty as the inner lives of the characters.
“Moses crossed the room and returned with the chairs. He placed them side by side next to the bed. He offered one to Mary. They both sat down.”
This unevenness of the novel is very frustrating. I wanted it to be a different novel and in places it promises to be so but it never quite delivers.
At the end the two main plot lines — Peach searching for Moses and Moses searching for himself — coalesce in an eerie conclusion.
Moses has a vision of himself in the future returning in a taxi to the site where he now stands.
Nostalgia is a luxury. I’m glad I had the time and the money to give this novel a second chance and experience in 2024 what I was unable to appreciate in 1987. I’m glad, too, that I had the luxury of time needed to write this review and think over what I’ve read.
Perhaps the clue to the novel’s depth, the depth that I missed while I was reading it, is in the very emptiness of the characters’ lives, the impermanence of their experiences and the fragility of their memories.
At the end Moses stands on the brink of a new beginning. It’s possible to see this as a novel of hope. That, anyway, is what I’m going to take away from it. Hope and the permission to be nostalgic in the future for the present that I’m experiencing now.
Looking through my journal of that year I see there were such seismic disturbances in my life that I’m surprised I found time to read anything at all. Perhaps it wasn’t the novel’s fault but mine. So I decided to acquire another copy of it — nostalgia prompted me to buy the same first hardback edition — and make a fresh attempt.
I felt the same disappointment and nearly abandoned it again but I was determined this time to find some value in it. There must have been a deep psychological reason why I’d bought it twice. I had to find out what it was.
I can relate to the theme. It tells the story of Moses, who is born to a couple in a small fictional village in Sussex where the entire population is held captive by a vindictive police force. They dream only of escape. Many of them do try to escape using contraptions and schemes that are reminiscent of some of the more bizarre escape attempts made by people in East Berlin. But none of them succeed.
Life in this village, called New Egypt, is surreal. Unlike in East Berlin, there is no wall. But, like old Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs, there is a river with a bank that is shielded from view by a thick screen of rushes. Moses’s father uses the rushes to make a basket, puts Moses in it and sets him adrift.
Twenty-five years later Moses turns up at a “Building of Many Colours” in south east London where he takes up residence on the top floor above a night club called The Bunker. He is drifting through life, searching for meaning and a sense of identity.
Moses meets a girl at a party and he is instantly attracted to her because her eyebrows say “quarter to two”. She is a singer called Gloria and he decides he can’t let this opportunity pass because he once refused to take a mandarin from a girl on Bond Street and has regretted the missed opportunity ever since.
“This Gloria, she was another mandarin. And she would glow in his memory, glow and glow, taunting, unforgettable.”
The narrative is filled with these kinds of images. There are many unusual similes and metaphors. A handkerchief balled in the palm of a hand can be “like a confession.” The fluttering of napkins in a restaurant can be “as if two white birds had spread their wings only to discover that they couldn’t fly.”
Sometimes a poetic image works brilliantly and provides symbolic emphasis of how two characters stand in relation to one another. But it can be let down in the same paragraph by an idea that is faintly ridiculous.
“She lit a cigarette. The match rasped, tore the darkness open. In those few seconds he quickly searched her face once more for some faint indication of the time. It told him nothing. The idea that her eyebrows had once been the hands of a clock, that her face had once been a clock-face, recording their time together, an eternity, perhaps now seemed fanciful, absurd. Was this the end then?”
The relationship with Gloria ends not because of any change in Gloria’s face but because Moses loses interest in her after he discovers that she comes from a background of wealth and privilege that is way out of his league. This version of events is unexplored and vanishes into the distance as the plot moves on towards a second romantic entanglement between Moses and a married older woman called Mary. The names, like much else in the novel, are suggestive but do little to give the characters any depth.
Back in the village of New Egypt, Chief Inspector Peach, who is convinced that Moses is still alive, is plotting to hunt him down and bring him to justice.
Meanwhile the poetry continues when Moses and Mary take a trip to the coast.
“The sea was breathing deeply like someone sound asleep, each wave a soft exhalation through its open mouth.”
The sensibility that observes the surface of things rarely looks deeper. There are very few attempts to describe why things happen or to explore the motives and inner lives of the characters. The ultimate joy for the protagonists, when they are not having sex, or even sometimes when they are, is to blunt their feelings and lose consciousness.
“What a day it had been. There seemed nothing for it but to get terribly drunk. After all, as Mary reminded him, it was their first night alone together.”
Sometimes the descriptions are as empty as the inner lives of the characters.
“Moses crossed the room and returned with the chairs. He placed them side by side next to the bed. He offered one to Mary. They both sat down.”
This unevenness of the novel is very frustrating. I wanted it to be a different novel and in places it promises to be so but it never quite delivers.
At the end the two main plot lines — Peach searching for Moses and Moses searching for himself — coalesce in an eerie conclusion.
Moses has a vision of himself in the future returning in a taxi to the site where he now stands.
“He became aware of the meter ticking away loudly behind him, ticking like a direct personal threat, as if, at any moment, it might blow his fragile memories to smithereens. Nostalgia was a luxury, it told him, and had to paid for.”
Nostalgia is a luxury. I’m glad I had the time and the money to give this novel a second chance and experience in 2024 what I was unable to appreciate in 1987. I’m glad, too, that I had the luxury of time needed to write this review and think over what I’ve read.
Perhaps the clue to the novel’s depth, the depth that I missed while I was reading it, is in the very emptiness of the characters’ lives, the impermanence of their experiences and the fragility of their memories.
At the end Moses stands on the brink of a new beginning. It’s possible to see this as a novel of hope. That, anyway, is what I’m going to take away from it. Hope and the permission to be nostalgic in the future for the present that I’m experiencing now.
March 2, 2025
some parts i loved, some parts bored me to death. overall, not a bad experience
March 29, 2015
A deeply infuriating book. So many things were good but I think the author just tried to throw a sink and bath mat at it too.
The idea of the village itself is fascinating, yet half of the book is set away from it and at the end the story of the village is left hanging.
And the random placing of sudden things to help the plot along - like a darkroom handily available after 400 pages. Drove me mad.
There is some really beautiful writing and ideas. But it swung too far between 2 and 4 stars on a pagely basis.
The idea of the village itself is fascinating, yet half of the book is set away from it and at the end the story of the village is left hanging.
And the random placing of sudden things to help the plot along - like a darkroom handily available after 400 pages. Drove me mad.
There is some really beautiful writing and ideas. But it swung too far between 2 and 4 stars on a pagely basis.
July 17, 2014
'Dreams of Leaving' Hit me in a strange way. At the time I read it, the expression reflected my desire to leave home, move, travel go anywhere.
Although the nature of drawing out those dreams is the same is being hit in head with a brick.
Rupert Thompson writing is magical in the sense that the words he uses create this euphoric sense of fantasy. At the same time he hit perfectly on the pessimistic reality that grounded and tied the book together.
Although the nature of drawing out those dreams is the same is being hit in head with a brick.
Rupert Thompson writing is magical in the sense that the words he uses create this euphoric sense of fantasy. At the same time he hit perfectly on the pessimistic reality that grounded and tied the book together.
October 5, 2018
This is one of the worst books I’ve ever read, which is sad, because the writing isn’t terrible. It’s the story that’s terrible. The story rambles and detours and runs away with itself and tortures you as you believe the ending will resolve the story but it never does. This book would’ve been so much better as a short story. It is predictable and every piece of it that is new or interesting is never properly addressed. Skip it!
December 30, 2016
I loved this book when I first read it in my early 20's now I just liked it. Funny how your tastes change
January 11, 2024
A unique story unlike anything I've ever read. If you can suspend your disbelief enough to accept the overriding concept of the novel, then it is a rewarding read. I liked Thompson's prose, and his use of metaphors. A character I particularly enjoyed reading was the bad-boy nightclub owner, Eliot, and the author does a great job in describing the seedier aspects of Moses's surroundings, which provide a sound contrast to the restrictive world of New Egypt. I bought this novel for next to nothing in a local charity shop, and had never heard of the author and had no expectations of the book, so I was pleasantly surprised at discovering this gem.
December 4, 2025
The book contrasts two worlds which are only a short drive apart, much like the contrast between city and rural life but with the added twist of a police state environment in a rural village. Our main character has many relationships with different people but none are fulfilling, and his acquaintances all have many flaws, much as we all do.
March 25, 2022
This author were definitely fantastic. I love it
December 21, 2022
A slightly rambling mashup of Withnail & I and The Prisoner.
April 18, 2023
Absolutely loved this book.
Rupert is so skilled at combining and dividing worlds without compromising the intimate presence of the protagonist.
Rupert is so skilled at combining and dividing worlds without compromising the intimate presence of the protagonist.
July 31, 2013
It started out with one story and then flipped to something totally unrelated and not interesting at all. Sorry but the main character was just a stoned, drunk scrounger with no sense of women and I just kept skipping through to get back to the bits about the original story. When I hoped the story might get interesting it didn't and I don't even feel it arrived anywhere at the end so all in all a disappointing read.
August 22, 2013
This book was well written and an interesting plot. I was disappointed in the main character of the story who didn't seem to have much personality. Too much description went into drunken and drug influenced thoughts, and not enough went into the people of new Egypt and what kept them there.
December 17, 2013
not perfect but quite magical and it contains my favourite closing paragraph ever - the tomatos / smiles paragraph bouys my heart everytime i read it
May 28, 2015
One of the few books in my life that I couldn't finish.
January 14, 2016
Started off so great. Beautiful writing and engaging story. Then looses steam fast. Couldn't get through the second half of the book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews