A novel where the protagonist cannot discern reality from dreams?

[SirJazzHands]

Lately I've been kind of.. sleep deprived and my dreams kind of seem to have an effect on my ways of thinking in everyday life, haha.
I'd just like to know if there are any books that kind of have the same thing going on? I want to think Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle but not really.

[Etienne]

The Luzhin Defense by Nabokov.

[JCamilo]

The man that was Friday by Chesterton, In a way, The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, Lewis Carroll's Alice books of course...
anyways, there is a short story of Jorge Luis Borges, named Funes the memorious that is about a man who suffers insomia...

[kilted exile]

Try Lunar Park by Ellis

[AuntShecky]

I am told that "The Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk posits
the protagonist as dreamer.

Don't forget the master, Mark Twain. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Which Was the Dream.

And duh! how could I forget -- A Midsummer Night's Dream/

Also, please accept a piece of advice. I've read many accounts of "what editors look for." The consensus is that they consider dream scenarios in fictional plots to be a cliché at best and a cop-out at worst. But the dream is
a time-honored literary tradition, going way, way back to the Bible and the Greeks "deus ex machina."

[JCamilo]

Actually, Garcia Marquez would describe his style (and probally the famous Fantastic Realism) was someone who does not perceive the different between irreal and real, dreams and reality...

[SirJazzHands]

Oh really? I've been meaning to read some of Marquez's stuff.. which of his works have that?
(And to the user who mentioned dreams as cliche, that isn't even what I mean really.)

[livelaughlove]

Couldn't Don Quijote fit into this category as well?

[SirJazzHands]

Ah yes, I feel dumb.. of course it would fit. I still haven't read that either, mostly because I'm not sure which translation is best. Suggestions?

[rmd]

The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas might be book you would find interesting. When it came out in 1981 it was a huge bestseller. I remember finding it quite absorbing. If, however, you are not receptive to Freudian analysis, which drives large parts of this novel, best stay away.

The book may eventually be filmed -- Nicole Kidman was/is apparently interested in starring as Anna G./Lisa -- but there has been no end of behind the scenes wrangling over rights, etc.

[JCamilo]

Oh really? I've been meaning to read some of Marquez's stuff.. which of his works have that?
(And to the user who mentioned dreams as cliche, that isn't even what I mean really.)

One Hundred Years can be seen this way, some of his short stories as well.
Most of the Magic Realism (which is something derivated from Kafka, Robert Louis Stevenson, Chesterton and maybe Mario de Andrade's Macunaima) works this way (and maybe even more, since even the reader can tell the difference between reality and fantasy), unlike Dom Quixote, where Alonso Quijano can not tell the difference but we can.

[Etienne]

Well in magic realism, everything is reality, just some kind of different world, but magic DO happen. So it's not some kind of dream or illusion. So considering what SirJazzHands is looking for, Don Quixote would probably be the best example.

[livelaughlove]

I don't know which translation I read but I think they all should be pretty good. I haven't compared the spanish and the english versions but honestly I don't think you could go wrong, regardless of which translation you pick.

[AuntShecky]

Magic realism!
Of course, that must be it.
I love everybody who posts on these forums, I really do!

[JCamilo]

Well in magic realism, everything is reality, just some kind of different world, but magic DO happen. So it's not some kind of dream or illusion. So considering what SirJazzHands is looking for, Don Quixote would probably be the best example.

Not always. Consider what the forefather of Magic Realism says : I have not decided yet which is true: Reality or what I wrote.
Magic Realism is about different perception, sometimes there is more than one reality in one story. They do not live in a fantasy world.

[HotKarl]

Vonnegut: Slaughter House 5 and Breakfast of Champions. Arias: The Road to Tamazunchale--again in the realm of magical realism.

[chasestalling]

The Luzhin Defense by Nabokov.

i second this