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“Coins in the Urinal: To dream of coins discarded in the rank sediment of a public urinal is to dream that one’s hopes and wishes for the future will certainly be dashed. If the coins are foreign, the disappointment will be particularly great…”

What is the meaning of the dream in which one touches, without meaning to, the hand of a fellow traveler on an underground train? What does it mean to dream of a telethon, a modem, a Rastafarian or of the former Soviet Union? What does it mean to dream of a change in housing benefit regulations? Or to dream that someone you love dearly is trying to barcode-scan your eyes?

Tim Etchells’ third book, The Dream Dictionary…, is a playful and mischievous work of fiction in the form of a guide for modern dreamers. Concentrated on those aspects of contemporary life and dreaming which other dictionaries have neglected, the book is a subversive and darkly comical look at the modern world. Including some one thousand entries, The Dream Dictionary… is both an experiment with a new fragmentary form of storytelling and an alphabetical catalogue of some of Etchells’ recurring obsessions – from forgotten passwords to malfunctioning deepfreezes, traffic jams and karaoke machines.

“the book adds up to a kind of poker-faced dadaist prank that actually manages to insert itself into your consciousness as successfully as anything done by more celebrated surrealists…..(the) perfect execution of this idea gives the whole book a kind of plausibility, as well as a sense of the poetry of the world.”
THE GUARDIAN

“an ironic A-Z of nocturnal fantasies, fears and forebodings for the twenty-first century.”
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT