Susanna Kwan Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Susanna Kwan is an author known for writing her debut novel, Awake in the Floating City.

Susanna resides in San Francisco.

Awake in the Floating City is a 2025 novel from Susanna Kwan. This is a book that has been praised by people such as Rachel Khong, the author of Real Americans, who has called this debut novel from Susanna Kan an ‘astonishing work of art’ and commented that this is the type of novel that ‘changes you’ and leaves you ‘seeing more vividly […] more fully, in its wake’.

This is a debut novel that will transport the reader! The subject of the book is an unexpected relationship that unfolds between an artist as well as the woman of a hundred and thirty years that she cares for. They are some of the last people that are living in the future city of San Francisco that has been flooded. Even though it’s a dire situation, it’s a place that they consider their home, and neither one of them is ready to leave it.

Bo understands on a deep innate level that she should leave this place. The city has been affected by years of rain and the rainfall has resulted in the city being drowned. Nearly everyone else who lives there has left and fled the area by now.

Bo has been on her own since her mother was carried away in a storm surge. This has caused her to stall in so many ways. She is an artist who cannot make art and a daughter who cannot give up on the hopeful idea that her mother is still out there somewhere and still alive somehow.

Still, Bo knows that she cannot remain in the city forever. She lets her cousin plan for a way to get out of there, but as the day of escape comes closer, she discovers a note that has been put under her door. The note was slipped there by Mia, an older woman who resides in the building. She wants to hire Bo as her caregiver. Just this small reason suddenly gives Bo a reason to stick around even though previously she had every reason to leave.

Once she starts to get to know Mia, Bo starts to get a better sense of her personality. She can often be prickly, but this aspect of her personality does not get in the way of she and Bo making a deeper connection together. It’s actually much deeper than any connection Bo has had with a client before.

Bo and Mia talk quite a bit and the client shares with her some stories of her life. The stories end up inspiring Bo to go closer back to art, back to the practice that she believed that she had abandoned so long ago.

Bo listens to Mia and lets her memories get mixed up with her own. Through doing so, Bo realizes just how much history is going to be lost as San Francisco gets conquered by water. When Mia’s health takes a turn for the worse, Bo wants to do her best to honor their world that has been disappearing and the woman who has helped to bring her back to it.

She then takes on a project that will end up teaching her a lot of important lessons. These include how to care, to be present, how to commemorate a place and a life that may be lost forever. Can Bo take care of Mia faithfully, and will she choose to stay if something happens? Read this book to find out!