The novel is focused around Mark-Alem, a young man of a noble breed who is suddenly employed to a large ministry, partly due to his family's whim. This gargantuan institution, called 'Palace of Dreams' or 'Tabir Sarai', is a huge machinery functioning within the United Ottoman States – an empire purposedly placed by the author beyond any temporal marks.
The Palace's mechanism revolves around collecting the dreams of all Sultan's subjects and their further analysis. Dreams, as is implied, can be incoherent – but some of them do carry a meaning, which might be predicting some future victories or misfortunes. To get it, one needs to carefully deduce all hidden signs. On this belief is based the colossal, truly kafkaesque system of meticulous recording and sending dreams on paper scrolls to the Tabir Sarai, where they are selected, re-selected, and continuously interpreted. This is performed by a huge army of clerks, behaving in a robot-like way, fully accustomed to the menial work their are supposed to do – deciphering a would-be fatal event in one's random delirious ravings. Once a week the most menaceful or senseful dream is sent to the Sultan itself, and only few know whose doom it will cause, what rash decision is will provoke.
Thus, the Palace of Dreams is a sort of dystopian thought police – yet it is used not as a population-control mechanism, but rather as a sort of research agency trying to predict the fate of the Empire. However, those who dare to dream something undesirable face dire consequences. And it is a matter of secret and supposition whether the outcome of the dream-recycling process might be somehow influenced by ill-willing plotters, whether the fight between the powerful political factors is reflected in the actions of Tabir Saray.
And so, through the labirinth of this institution the pratogonist is supposed to wander, in its chill offices he has to plod through his monotonous labour.And he will not remain unaffected by the eery pressure exerted by its walls – moreso, he will not be able to stay in static position. His curious, indefinite fate is revealed by the novel – a man inside a huge mechanism, a little cog in a vast system, easily swept by the flow of unavoidable, fatal events.
The curious particularity of the novel is that it was written inside a totalitarian state, by a dissident writer eluding the eyes of an omnipotent dictator. Therefore, it contains numerous allusions to the reality, after discovery of which only international reputation spared the author from the hands of Secret Police. At least for this act of bravery I consider Palace of Dreams to be worth reading.
by ArthRol