Drunks, actors, gamblers, "love and drink and all the clothes on the floor." Billie Holiday's music in nightclubs, erotic encounters and parties, disappointments, friendships and "the people I buried." From a bohemian hotel in Manhattan, a young woman who has run away from her childhood home in Kentucky observes New York and the world, starting to become herself through memories, experiences, encounters that shed light on the racism, sexism, miseries and greatness of the era.
That young woman would become the most influential American literary critic, an intellectual capable of shaping the culture of her time. Sleepless Nights, first published in 1979, is the story of her life and the story of a century, the twentieth century. A unique collage of novel, memoir, essay, letter, poetry and dream. A language in which to lose oneself and, finally, find oneself.
