The New Jersey Book of the Dead is an ensemble piece by Jason Grote about American workers on the eve of the twenty-first century; Diana, a call center worker in Jersey City, is juggling her job with single motherhood and the impending homelessness of her estranged, schizophrenic husband Oscar. She and her lover, Cass, decide to try to organize a union in Diana's workplace, but run up against Omnivore, a sophisticated surveillance program that tracks Diana's every move. Omnivore is manipulated by Diana's boss Alvaro, who tries to use the program to evade getting caught for money laundering. Meanwhile, the program seems to invade the dreams of the characters, mixing postmodern capitalism with images of the origin of modernity in Ancient Egypt.

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