Acclaimed Belfast-based writer Christopher Owens returns with his most searing and psychologically incisive work to date, Soviet Hotel Dressing Gown — a novel of fractured memories, parallel lives, and the silent aftermath of trauma.
Set against the liminal no-man’s-land of a diverted flight into Dublin Airport, the book follows two strangers, Jake and Roibeard, who never meet, never speak, and never realise how closely their internal storms mirror one another.
As each man confronts the shadows of his past — the wounds that shaped him, the choices that scarred him, and the future that awaits once they finally reach Belfast — Owens crafts a dual narrative that is both intimate and monumental.
Soviet Hotel Dressing Gown explores how trauma lingers in the body, how cities carve themselves into their inhabitants, and how two lives can run parallel without ever intersecting, bound by the same unspoken ache.
Owens’s previous books have earned praise from leading literary and cultural figures including Patrick McCabe (The Butcher Boy), Gary Mundy (Ramleh), and Gareth Mulvenna (Tartan Gangs and Paramilitaries), cementing his reputation as one of Northern Ireland’s most compelling and fearless contemporary authors.
Critics have already hailed the novel as one of Owens’s most resonant and unforgettable works earning praise from fellow writers.
Soviet Hotel Dressing Gown will be released on February 26, and will be available on Amazon.
Early Praise for Ownes’ fourth book includes:
“It’s fitting that Soviet Hotel Dressing Gown is named after a song, a catchy ballad brimming with loss. Reading the book reminded me of the time I found beautiful broken glass in the field behind my house, and how later, after the field had caught fire, flames licking the sky above every house on the block, the gleam of the culprit – refracting glass – in my mind seemed to laugh. Likewise, the shimmering, dark undertones in Owens’s work won’t easily be forgotten.”
— David Kuhnlein (Ezra’s Head, Bloodletter)
“Christopher Owens has done it again with Soviet Hotel Dressing Gown, a beautifully written, stark, hallucinatory descent into loss, memory and the brutal ways cities shape the men who try to outrun them. Told in blistering fragments and fever-dream clarity, it is a raw, unflinching descent into loss, masculinity, and the way trauma echoes through cities and generations. Part noir confession, part psychological unravelling, it captures a life lived at the margins, where every mistake has a body attached and every memory has teeth. Highly recommended — yet another beautiful work from Owens.”
— Tony Nesca (Junkyard Lucy, Poems and Photographs)