Broken Sleep
| Author | Bruce Bauman |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Jon Gray (aka gray318) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | political novel, picaresque, tragicomedy, postmodern, Jewish American literature, encyclopedic novel |
| Publisher | Other Press |
|
Publication date
|
November 2, 2015 |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 642 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 968985724 |
| LC Class | PS3602.A955 |
Broken Sleep: an American Dream is the second novel by American writer Bruce Bauman, published in 2015. It follows the exploits of the powerful Savant family, including rock star-cum-US presidential candidate Alchemy Savant, his half-brother Moses Teumer, and their brilliant but insane mother Salome Savant.
The novel chronicles 60 years of U.S. politics and pop culture, from the aftermath of World War II leading up to a speculative 2020 presidential election. The novel touches on many topics, including rock music, postmodern art, celebrity, insanity, terminal illness, the Holocaust, and United States presidential election politics. It makes political references to the fake news website phenomenon, the rise of a third party to save a failing two-party system, and a grass-roots movement for partition and secession in California. Its discussion of Jewish-American identity has led to its categorization as a Jewish literary novel in the vein of Saul Bellow.
The novel has an asynchronous narrative structure that weaves together four major narratives:
The narratives are loosely related, linked together if not by chronological time, then by common characters and themes. But the novel hints at another way its four narratives relate to one another—namely that they were collected, compiled, and arranged by one of the novel’s secondary characters, Jay Bernes, and given the alternative title "the Book of J." Jay, aka "J," is identified in the novel’s back matter as the “Gifter of the Book of J,” while the character Persephone, who mistakenly self-identifies as Moses's niece, claims in the introduction that “auntie jay gave me a gift, the Book of J.” The author Bruce Bauman has also alluded to the Book of J’s importance in relation to the novel’s religious themes.
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