Bruno Slept Here is a documentary novel about love, yoga, and war, based on the life of my teenaged father.
The story begins in 1942, in Nazi-occupied Riga, when Bruno joins a clandestine yoga club whose teachings go beyond headstands to include astral projection. He is conscripted into the Latvian regiment of the Waffen SS at the age of seventeen and, with only a Vedic mantra as protection, is pitched into the madness of the last year of war.
I braid my factual voice into the fiction, based on years of research. I start with the stories I heard as a child on family road trips, and eventually, as an adult, take the wheel of a rental car to map Bruno’s escapes and imprisonments from Poland to Belgium. As I write my way through my father’s disasters, the world around me darkens and the pandemic takes over. His story becomes one of resilience and good cheer in a collapsing world.
In December 2024, the book was published by Latvijas mediji, translated by Ieva Lešinska, under the title Te bija Brunis.
Excerpt:
When the woman cried out, they’re coming they’re coming I hear them, Harijs raised his hand ever so slightly. "You will feel better very soon.” The guru talked a little slower, his voice a little deeper, oozing through stories about faraway islands where bananas grew on trees and miracle doctors reached into stomachs.
The frightened woman fell asleep, and as soon as she did, Harijs stopped talking. Bruno felt all the energy drain from him as if he’d been running as fast as he could and crossed the finish line. “So, this was hypnosis,” he thought.
Yes, it is, he heard a voice say, though there was only silence.
