And Then I Woke Up

Winner of the 2022 Australian Shadows Award for Best Long Fiction

Nominated for the 2023 British Fantasy Award for Best Novella

"Intelligent, compassionate and unsettling."—The New York Times

“Devlin twists and breaks the typical zombie narrative without spoiling one of the cleverest conceits in recent horror. Suffice to say that the author takes a scalpel to the post-truth era.”—Esquire

In the tradition of Mira Grant and Stephen Graham Jones, Malcolm Devlin’s And Then I Woke Up is a creepy, layered, literary story about false narratives and their ability to divide us.

In a world reeling from an unusual plague, monsters lurk in the streets while terrified survivors arm themselves and roam the countryside in packs. Or perhaps something very different is happening. When a disease affects how reality is perceived, it’s hard to be certain of anything…

Spence is one of the “cured” living at the Ironside rehabilitation facility. Haunted by guilt, he refuses to face the changed world until a new inmate challenges him to help her find her old crew. But if he can’t tell the truth from the lies, how will he know if he has earned the redemption he dreams of? How will he know he hasn’t just made things worse?