Bruno's Dream

Bruno's Dream
	Cover of the first edition
Author	Iris Murdoch
Cover artist	Patricia Davey
Language	English
Publisher	Chatto & Windus
Publication date	1969
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	293
ISBN	0701114266
OCLC	251613990

Bruno's Dream is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1969, it was her twelfth novel.

Plot

Set in London, the novel tells the story of a dying man called Bruno and his family. Narrated in the third person that allows for multiple character perspectives it follows Bruno, Bruno's son Miles, Miles' wife Diana and her sister Lisa, Bruno's son-in-law Danby, Bruno's nurse Adelaide, Nigel (the messianic figure consistently found in Murdoch's novels) and Nigel's twin brother, Will. The novel ends with all the different people, other than Nigel, coupling up.

Couples: Miles and Parvati (1st wife), Miles and Diana (2nd wife), Miles and Lisa (Diana's sister) they love each other but never get together. Danby and Gwen (1st wife and Bruno's daughter), Danby and Adelaide (his maid/mistress), Danby and Diana- they go dancing once and he proposes an affair, but it doesn't come to fruition. Danby and Lisa (they end up together at the end of the novel. Bruno and Janie (his wife), Bruno and Maureen (his mistress). Will and Adelaide (cousins) In the end the couples are Miles and Diana, Danby and Lisa, Bruno and Diana, and Will and Adelaide.

Awards and nominations

Bruno's Dream was shortlisted for the 1970 Booker Prize.^[1]

Reception

The critic Harold Bloom listed Bruno's Dream in his The Western Canon (1994) as one of the books in his conception of artistic works that have been important and influential in Western culture.^[2] The writer A. N. Wilson described Bruno's Dream as one of the most "distinctive and successful" novels Murdoch wrote in the 1960s.^[3]

References

^ "The Man Booker Prize Archive" (PDF). The Man Booker Prize. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 September 2013. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
^ Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. Riverhead Books, 1995, 523.
^ Wilson, A. N. Iris Murdoch as I Knew Her. Arrow Books, 2004, 523.

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[Bookerarchive-1] "The Man Booker Prize Archive" (PDF). The Man Booker Prize. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 September 2013. Retrieved 20 October 2014.

[2] Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. Riverhead Books, 1995, 523.

[3] Wilson, A. N. Iris Murdoch as I Knew Her. Arrow Books, 2004, 523.

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v t e Works by Iris Murdoch
Novels	Under the Net (1954) The Flight from the Enchanter (1956) The Sandcastle (1957) The Bell (1958) A Severed Head (1961) An Unofficial Rose (1962) The Unicorn (1963) The Italian Girl (1964) The Red and the Green (1965) The Time of the Angels (1966) The Nice and the Good (1968) Bruno's Dream (1969) A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970) An Accidental Man (1971) The Black Prince (1973) The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974) A Word Child (1975) Henry and Cato (1976) The Sea, The Sea (1978) Nuns and Soldiers (1980) The Philosopher's Pupil (1983) The Good Apprentice (1985) The Book and the Brotherhood (1987) The Message to the Planet (1989) The Green Knight (1993) Jackson's Dilemma (1995)
Short stories	"Something Special" (1957)
Plays	A Severed Head (with J. B. Priestley, 1964) The Italian Girl (with James Saunders, 1969) The Three Arrows & the Servants and the Snow (1973) The Servants (1980) Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues (1986) The Black Prince (1987)
Poetry	A Year of Birds (1978, rev. 1984) Poems by Iris Murdoch (1997)
Philosophy	Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953) The Sovereignty of Good (1970) The Fire and the Sun (1977) Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals (1992) Existentialists and Mystics (1997)