In her latest collection, Grace Nichols explores those nocturnal hours where Sleep (the thief who nightly steals your brain) is hard to come by, and the politics of the day hard to shut out, never mind the lavender-scented pillow. Here, memories of her own Guyana childhood mingle with the sleeping specters of dreams and folk legends such as Sleeping Beauty. A lyrical interweaving of tones and textures invite the reader into the zones between sleep and no-sleep, between the solitude of the dark and the awakening of the light.