A contemporary novel which tells the story of Marco Stanley Fogg - orphan, child of the 1960s - spanning three generations. The narrative moves from the early years of this century to the first lunar landings, from Manhattan to the landscape of the American West.
The explosion at the start of this book ends the life of its hero, Benjamin Sachs, and brings two FBI agents to the home of one of Sachs's oldest friends, the writer Peter Aaron. What follows is Aaron's story, an investigation of another man's life. By the author of "Moon Palace".
The story of Walt, an irrepressible orphan from the Mid-West. Under the tutelage of the mesmerising Master Yehudi, Walt is taken back to the mysterious house on the plains to prepare not only for the ability to fly, but also for the stardom that will accompany it.
Twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born, and his silent and seductive girlfriend Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life.
Includes three cleverly interconnected novels, that contains stories in which the search for clues leads to remarkable coincidences in the universe as the simple act of trailing a man ultimately becomes a startling investigation of what it means to be human.
The New York Trilogy is an astonishing and original book: three cleverly interconnected novels that exploit the elements of standard detective fiction and achieve a new genre that is all the more gripping for its starkness. In each story the search for clues leads to remarkable coincidences in the universe as the simple act of trailing a man ultimately becomes a startling investigation of what it means to be human. Auster's book is modern fiction at its finest: bold, arresting and unputdownable
'I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn, and so the next morning I travelled down there from Westchester to scope out the terrain . . .' So begins Paul Auster's remarkable new novel, The Brooklyn Follies. Set against the backdrop of the contested US election of 2000, it tells the story of Nathan and Tom, an uncle and nephew double-act. One in remission from lung cancer, divorced, and estranged from his only daughter, the other hiding away from his once-promising academic career, and, indeed, from life in general.
Having accidentally ended up in the same Brooklyn neighbourhood, they discover a community teeming with life and passion. When Lucy, a little girl who refuses to speak, comes into their lives, there is suddenly a bridge from their pasts that offers them the possibility of redemption.
Infused with character, mystery and humour, these lives intertwine and become bound together as Auster brilliantly explores the wider terrain of contemporary America - a crucible of broken dreams and of human folly
Following the death of his father, Jim Nashe takes to the open road. But there he picks up Pozzi, a hitchhiking gambler, and is drawn into a dangerous game of high-stakes poker with two eccentric and reclusive millionaires.
Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness, novelist Sidney Orr enters a Brooklyn stationery shop and buys a blue notebook. It is September 18th, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, within a world of eerie premonitions.
Willy G Christmas, and Mr Bones embark on an adventure together, heading to Baltimore in search of Willy's beloved mentor Bea Swanson - who used to know him as William Gurevitch, son of Polish war refugees. But is she still alive?
In this novel Paul Auster offers a haunting picture of a devastated world - a futuristic world - but one which may be seen to shadow our own. Auster's other work includes "The New York Trilogy" and "Hand to Mouth", and the screenplays "Smoke" and "Blue in the Face".
One man's obsession with the mysterious life of a silent film star takes him on a journey into a shadow-world of lies, illusions, and unexpected love. After losing his wife and young sons in a plane crash, Vermont professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours mired in grief. Then, watching television one night, he stumbles upon a lost film by silent comedian Hector Mann, and remembers how to laugh . . .
Mann was a comic genius, in trademark white suit and fluttering black moustache. But one morning in 1929 he walked out of his house and was never heard from again. Zimmer's obsession with Mann drives him to publish a study of his work; whereupon he receives a letter postmarked New Mexico, supposedly written by Mann's wife, and inviting him to visit the great Mann himself. Can Hector Mann be alive? Zimmer cannot decide - until a strange woman appears on his doorstep and makes the decision for him, changing his life forever.
Written with breath-taking urgency and precision, this stunning novel plunges the reader into a universe in which the comic and the tragic, the real and the imagined, the violent and the tender dissolve into one another
Chosen by Paul Auster out of 4000 stories submitted to his radio programme on National Public Radio, these 180 stories provide an illuminating portrait of America in the 20th century. The selection requirement of the stories was that they should be true and not previously published.
' You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else. ' In Winter Journal , Paul Auster moves through the events of his life in a series of memories grasped from the point of view of his life now: playing baseball as a teenager; participating in the anti-Vietnam demonstrations at Columbia University; seeking out prostitutes in Paris, almost killing his second wife and child in a car accident; falling in and out of live with his first wife; the 'scalding, epiphanic moment of clarity' in 1978 that set him on a new course as a writer. Winter Journal is a poignant memoir of ageing and memory, written with all the characteristic subtlety, imagination and insight that readers of Paul Auster have come to cherish. 'An examination of the emotions of a man growing old . . . this book has much to recommend it, and Auster is unsparingly honest about himself.' Financial Times
An old man sits in a room, with a single door and window, a bed, a desk and a chair. Each day he awakes with no memory, unsure of whether or not he is locked into the room. Attached to the few objects around him are one-word, hand-written labels, and on the desk is a series of vaguely familiar black-and-white photographs and four piles of paper.
Martin Frost goes to a country house to write his novel away from the distractions of the city. Thinking that he is the sole occupant of the house, he is surprised and annoyed when he discovers a young woman in residence. They begin a passionate affair, which reaches an intriguing climax when he has to choose between his life and his art.
Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident. Plagued by insomnia, he tries to push back thoughts of things he would prefer to forget - his wife's recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus - by telling himself stories. This novel celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a brutal world.
Includes three interconnected novels that exploit the elements of standard detective fiction and achieve a fresh genre that is all the more gripping for its starkness.
' In the beginning, everything was alive. The smallest objects were endowed with beating hearts . . . ' Having recalled his life through the story of his physical self in Winter Journal , internationally best-selling novelist Paul Auster now remembers the experience of his development from within, through the encounters of his interior self with the outer world, as well as through a selection of the revealing letters he sent to his first wife, acclaimed author Lydia Davis. An impressionistic portrait of a writer coming of age, Report from the Interior moves from Auster's baby's-eye view of the man in the moon to his childhood worship of the movie cowboy Buster Crabbe to the composition of his first poem at the age of nine to his dawning awareness of the injustices of American life. Report from the Interior charts Auster's moral, political and intellectual journey as he inches his way toward adulthood through the post-war fifties and into the turbulent 1960s. Paul Auster evokes the sounds, smells, and tactile sensations that marked his early life - and the many images that came at him, including moving images (he adored cartoons, he was in love with films), until, at its unique climax, the book breaks away from prose into pure imagery: the final section of Report from the Interior recapitulates the first three parts, told in an album of pictures. At once a story of the times and the story of the emerging consciousness of a renowned literary artist, this four-part work answers the challenge of autobiography in ways rarely, if ever, seen before.
Chosen by Paul Auster out of the four thousand stories submitted to his radio programme on National Public Radio, these 180 stories provide a wonderful portrait of America in the twentieth century. The requirement for selection was that each of the stories should be true, and each of the writers should not have been previously published. The collection that has emerged provides a richly varied and authentic voice for the American people, whose lives, loves, griefs, regrets, joys and sense of humour are vividly and honestly recounted throughout, and adeptly organised by Auster into themed sections. The section composed of war stories stretches as far back as the Civil War, still the defining moment in American history; while the sequence of 'Meditations' conclude the volume with a true and abiding sense of transcendence. The resultant anthology is both an enduring hymn to the strange everyday of contemporary American life and a masterclass in the art of storytelling.
