As a night worrier from childhood, I was a little wary of giving my subconscious any further ideas or licence by reading French author Marie Darrieussecq’s new book, Sleepless, but it was too intriguing to resist, and I am very glad I gave in. Darrieussecq is an award-winning novelist with a PhD in literature, she’s a translator from English, and she has practised as a psychoanalyst – all these endeavours assist in illuminating her subject as she seeks to grapple with the tortuous question of why she can no longer sleep.

Darrieussecq’s research and reflections cover enormous intellectual ground, encompassing literature and literary people, along with ecology and anthropology. They take her as far as the forests of Southern Cameroon, and, perhaps inevitably, to some dark nights of the soul. She finds abstract companionship, if not solace, in discovering that her now decades-long inability to sleep is an affliction many other writers (and their characters) have borne, but the reasons some people suffer insomnia and others do not remain elusive. It can be brought on by periods of worry, but it can also be inexplicable, with no apparent cause. In Darrieussecq’s case, it is inexplicable and persistent, and the search for a solution takes years.

Translated from French by Text Publishing senior editor and award-winning translator Penny Hueston, who has also brought several other works by Darrieussecq to English-language readers, this wonderful work of nonfiction is a veritable prism through which interconnected and complementary ideas are refracted simultaneously. The effect could be overwhelming, particularly to an audience potentially as sleep deprived as the author, however this book is as lucid as it is literary, and it is not just for insomniacs. If you’ve ever felt existential dread prompted by the threats of the Anthropocene, or wondered about the 4am lives of 20th-century writers, you’ll find much in Sleepless to contemplate and enliven, delivered with surprising (but not manic) energy.