Empire of Dreams

A postmodern epic in three parts that chronicles Braschi’s decade-long love affair with 1980s New York City. Clowns, shepherds, and aspiring writers collide in prose poetry that feels like a carnival spilling across the page.

Why Start Here

Empire of Dreams is the work that made Braschi’s reputation, and it remains the best doorway into her world. Originally published in Spanish as El imperio de los sueños and translated into English by Tess O’Dwyer, it won the Columbia University Translation Center Award and inaugurated the Yale Library of World Literature in Translation. That pedigree matters because it tells you something about the quality of the English text you are reading.

The book is divided into three sections that work like movements in a symphony. “Book of Clowns and Buffoons” reimagines city life as spectacle, full of grotesque humor and carnival energy. “Pastoral,” inspired by the Puerto Rican Day parade, reclaims urban space through a celebration rooted in the natural world. “The Intimate Diary of Solitude” follows an aspiring actress-writer named Mariquita Samper and sends up the magical realism of Latin American novelists with warmth rather than malice.

What makes this the right starting point is that it contains all of Braschi in miniature: the genre-bending, the political fire, the lyrical beauty, and the refusal to choose between poetry and prose. If you connect with any one of the three sections, you will want to read the rest.

What to Expect

A hybrid text that moves between prose poetry, drama, diary entries, literary theory, and something close to musical theater. The structure nests books within books, like Russian dolls. The voice shifts constantly but always returns to the same obsessions: what it means to be an outsider in the city you love, how language both reveals and conceals the self, and why art matters when everything else is falling apart. Expect to be disoriented at first, then absorbed.