Books by Paul Auster

Book SynopsisPaul Auster''s dystopian future from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian) ''That is how it works in the City. Every time you think you know the answer to a question, you discover that the question makes no sense . . .''This is the story of Anna Blume and her journey to find her lost brother, William, in the unnamed City. Like the City itself, however, it is a journey that is doomed, and so all that is left is Anna''s unwritten account of what happened.Paul Auster takes us to an unspecified and devastated world in which the self disappears amidst the horrors that surround us. But this is not just an imaginary, futuristic world: like the settings of Kafka stories, it is one that echoes our own, and in doing so addresses some of our darker legacies. In the Country of Last Things is a tense, psychological take on the dystopian novel. It continues Auster''s deep

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Book SynopsisRemarkably powerful.' Washington PostA compelling polemic, dismaying and often moving.' Jake Kerridge, Daily TelegraphNo issue divides Americans more deeply than the debate around guns. Paul Auster begins his examination of gun violence by looking into his own past, knowing first-hand how families can be wrecked by a single deadly act.Bloodbath Nation traces the origins of America's obsession with guns through one hundred and eighty years of history. The armed conflict against the native population and the brutal methods used to protect the institution of slavery created a nation that has never fully come to terms with its own past.This fraught heritage still hovers over the social and political landscape of the present moment. Change is necessary but it seems all but impossible. Auster asks the ultimate question: what kind of country do Americans want to live in? The answer, he argues, will not come fr

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Book SynopsisPaul Auster''s enthralling adventure story from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian) It was the summer that men first walked on the moon. I was very young back then, but did not believe there would ever be a future. I wanted to live dangerously, to push myself as far as I could go, and then see what happened when I got there.''So begins the mesmerising narrative of Marco Stanley Fogg - orphan, child of the 1960s, a quester by nature. Moon Palace is his story - a novel that spans three generations, from the early years of this century to the first lunar landings, and moves from the canyons of Manhattan to the cruelly beautiful landscape of the American West. Filled with suspense, unlikely coincidences, wrenching tragedies and marvellous flights of lyricism and erudition, the novel carries the reader effortlessly along with Marco''s search - for love, for his unknown fa

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Book SynopsisPaul Auster''s unsettling tale of chance and gambling from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian) Paul Auster fuses Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka and The Brothers Grimm in this brilliant and unsettling parable. Following the death of his father, Jim Nashe takes to the open road in pursuit of a ''life of freedom''. But as the money runs out he finds that his sense of disillusionment has only been compounded by his year on the road. However, after picking up Pozzi, a hitchhiking gambler, Nashe finds himself drawn into a dangerous game of high-stakes poker with two eccentric and reclusive millionaires. Paul Auster fuses Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka and The Brothers Grimm in this brilliant and unsettling parable. Following the death of his father, Jim Nashe takes to the open road in pursuit of a ''life of freedom''. But as the money runs out he finds that his sense of disillusionment has

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Book SynopsisPaul Auster''s explosively suspenseful tale from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian)''Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin . . .''The explosion that detonates the narrative of Paul Auster''s thrilling novel also 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 intricate, subtle and gripping investigation of another man''s life in all its richness and complexity. Combining an investigation of freedom and terrorism with all the tension, mystery and allusive richness of Auster''s classic fiction.

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Book SynopsisAuster''s haunting exploration of war in a post 9/11 world from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian) ''I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness.''Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter''s house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would rather forget - his wife''s recent death and the horrific murder, in Iraq, of his granddaughter''s boyfriend, Titus. Brill, a retired book critic, imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the Twin Towers did not fall on 9/11, and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and

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Book SynopsisAuster''s novel of love and forgiveness from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian) Sunset Park is set in the sprawling flatlands of Florida, where twenty-eight-year-old Miles is photographing the last lingering traces of families who have abandoned their houses due to debt or foreclosure. Miles is haunted by guilt for having inadvertently caused the death of his step-brother, a situation that caused him to flee his father and step-mother in New York seven years ago.What keeps him in Florida is his relationship with a teenage high-school girl, Pilar, but when her family threatens to expose their relationship, Miles decides to protect Pilar by going back to Brooklyn, where he settles in a squat to prepare himself to face the inevitable confrontation with his father - a confrontation he has been avoiding for years.Set against the backdrop of the devastating global rece

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Book Synopsis''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 t

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Book SynopsisHere and Now is a collection of letters between Paul Auster and Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee, two of the greatest writers of our time.'Uniquely insightful.' Independent'Extraordinary.' Times Literary SupplementAlthough Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee had been reading each other's books for years, the two writers did not meet until February 2008. Not long after, Auster received a letter from Coetzee, suggesting they begin exchanging letters on a regular basis and, 'God willing, strike sparks off each other'.Here and Now is the result of that proposal: an epistolary dialogue between two great writers who became great friends. Over three years their letters touched on nearly every subject, from sports to fatherhood, literature to film, philosophy to politics, from the financial crisis to art, eroticism, marriage, friendship, and love.

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Book SynopsisIn this acrobatic and virtuosic collection, Paul Auster traces the compulsion to make literature. In a selection of interviews, as well as in the essay ''The Red Notebook'' itself, Auster reflects upon his own work, on the need to break down the boundary between living and writing, and on the use of certain genre conventions to penetrate matters of memory and identity. The Red Notebook both illuminates and undermines our accepted notions about literature, and guides us towards a finer understanding of the dangerously high stakes involved in writing. It also includes Paul Auster''s impassioned essay ''A Prayer for Salman Rushdie'', as well as a set of striking and bittersweet reminiscences collected under the apposite title, ''Why Write?''Trade Review'Bears testimony to Auster's sense of the metaphysical elegance of life and art.' Literary Review

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Book SynopsisThe figure of the young American poet living in Paris is familiar from Paul Auster''s celebrated novels; here that character is realised in Auster''s own stunningly accomplished verse. His penetrating and charged poetry resembles little else in recent American literature. This collection of his poems, translations, and composition notes from early in his career furnish yet further evidence of his literary mastery.Taut, densely lyrical and everywhere informed by a powerful and subtle music, this selection begins with the compact verse fragments of Spokes (written when Auster was in his early twenties) and Unearth, continues on through the more ample meditations of Wall Writing, Disappearances, Effigies, Fragments From the Cold, Facing the Music, and White Spaces, then moves further back in time to include Auster''s revealing translations of many of the French poets who influenced his own writing - including Paul Eluard,

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Book Synopsis** WINNER OF THE L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY **'Exhilarating.' Joyce Carol Oates, Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year'Sharp-eyed and revealing.' The New Yorker'Brilliant . . . Remarkable.' New York Journal of BooksStephen Crane produced an avalanche of sublime literature before he succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of twenty-eight. Yet his short life was an eventful one: from crushing poverty as a newcomer to Manhattan and his near-drowning in a shipwreck, to his stint as a war correspondent in Cuba and international fame at twenty-five, to his final years in England and friendships with Joseph Conrad and Henry James. In Burning Boy, celebrated novelist Paul Auster delves deeply into the story of Crane's tumultuous and dramatic life.

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Book SynopsisAnd then it started, little by little it started, until they were married five years later and his real life began.''Exquisite ... A super-abundantly gifted, big-hearted novelist.'' Ian McEwan''A writer whose work shines with intelligence and originality.'' Don DeLilloThe life of Sy Baumgartner noted author, and soon-to-be retired philosophy professor has been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife. Now Anna is gone, and Baumgartner is trying to live with her absence. But Anna's voice is everywhere still, in every spiral of memory and reminiscence, in each recalled episode of the passionate forty years they shared.Rich with feeling, wit and an eye for beauty in the smallest, most transient episodes of ordinary life, Baumgartner is a luminous work a tender final masterpiece from one of the world''s greatest writers.''A master.'' The TimesWhat readers are saying:**

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Joan Mitchell... does justice to an artist... with grand ambitions and a formidable control of paint."—Matthew Holman, The Art Newspaper“One of the most stupendous art books in my collection”—Anna Murphy, The Times “The beauty of a lovingly curated monograph such as this is that when dozens of images are accrued in one place, the subtle shifts in execution and the development of an artist's visual language becomes clearer. Joan Mitchell emerges as a fascinating character and underappreciated 20th-century talent.”—Artists & Illustrators ‘Book of the Month’Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award Finalist, sponsored by the College Art Association

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Book SynopsisChosen 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.Trade Review'It is difficult to think of another book published this year, and probably any book to be published next year, that is so simple and so obvious, so excellent in intention and so elegant in its execution, and which displays such wisdom and such knowledge of human life in all its varieties.' Ian Sansom, Guardian; 'Fantastic... Glows with the truth of shared human experience.' The Face; 'Astonishing... This is writing at its very finest.' Independent

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Book SynopsisAuster''s existential tale of Mr Blank from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian) 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 photgraphs and four piles of paper. Then a middle-aged woman called Anna enters and talks of pills and treatment, but also of love and promises.Who is this Mr Blank, and what is his fate? What does Anna represent from his past - and will he have enough time to ever make sense of the clues that arise?After the huge success of The Brooklyn Follies, Travels in the Scriptorium sees Auster return to more metaphysical territory. A dark puzzle, and a game that implicates both readeTrade Review"'... as much a novel about the semantics of storytelling; Mr Blank remains a perfect study of confusion and memory that says everything about Auster's brilliance.' Metro"

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Book SynopsisPaul Auster's novels have earned him the reputation as one of America's most spectacularly inventive writers.' He has also brought this sense of invention to the art of screenwriting, producing Smoke, Blue in the Face, Lulu on the Bridge and The Inner Life of Martin Frost.Smoke tells the story of a novelist, a cigar store manager and a black teenager who unexpectedly cross paths. Blue in the Face is a largely improvised comedy directly inspired by Smoke. In Lulu on the Bridge, jazz musician Izzy Maurer is accidently hit with a bullet during a performance in a New York club, propelling him on a strange and frightening journey. The Inner Life of Martin Frost follows the unsettling experiences that befall a writer who borrows a friend's country house.The volume also contains production notes, as well as interviews with Paul Auster about his work in film.

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Book SynopsisAuster''s tale of family dynamics past and present from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian) ''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 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 tha

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Book SynopsisINTRODUCTION BY JO NESBØAFTERWORD BY PAUL AUSTERNineteenth-century Kristiania is an unforgiving place, and work is thin on the ground. Roaming the streets of Norway's capital, a penniless young writer searches for inspiration whilst trying desperately to make ends meet. Driven to extraordinary lengths, sleeping under the stars with his stomach growling, the writer's behaviour becomes increasingly irrational and his world spirals into chaos. Hunger was Knut Hamsun's first novel and earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920. A disturbing and darkly humorous masterpiece of existential fiction, Hunger anticipated and influenced some of the twentieth century's most acclaimed writers including Camus, Kafka and Fante.Trade ReviewHunger is the crux of Hamsun's claims to mastery. This is the classic novel of humiliation, even beyond Dostoevsky * * Observer * *One of the most disturbing novels in existence * * Time Out * *An excellent new translation . . . this Hunger deserves to be the standard English version * * Times Literary Supplement * *Hamsun has the qualities that belong to the very great, a complete omniscience on human nature -- Rebecca WestDisturbing and difficult as this nightmarish novel is, it is a work of imaginative brilliance that resonates in our own day * * Herald * *Hunger is undoubtedly one of the most important novels of the modern age. At last it has found a translator capable of doing justice to its immense power and complexity: Lyngstad's deserves to become the standard English version -- Duncan McCleanHunger was published in 1890 and its power has not faded * * London Review of Books * *

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Book Synopsis''One day there is life . . . And then, suddenly, it happens there is death.''So begins Paul Auster''s moving and personal meditation on fatherhood, The Invention of Solitude. The first section, ''Portrait of an Invisible Man'', reveals Auster''s memories and feelings after the death of his father. In ''The Book of Memory'' the perspective shifts to Auster''s role as a father. The narrator, ''A.'', contemplates his separation from his son, his dying grandfather and the solitary nature of writing and story-telling. With all the keen literary intelligence familiar from The New York Trilogy or Sunset Park, Paul Auster crafts an intensely intimate work from a ground-breaking combination of introspection, meditation and biography.

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Book SynopsisAuster''s tragicomic tale of one unforgettable dog from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian) Meet Mr Bones, the canine hero of Paul Auster''s remarkable novel. Bones is the sidekick of Willy G. Christmas, a brilliant but troubled poet-saint from Brooklyn. Together they sally forth across America to Baltimore, Maryland, on one last great adventure, searching for Willy''s old teacher, Bea Swanson. Years have passed since Willy last saw his beloved mentor, who used to know him as William Gurevitch, son of Polish war refugees. But is Mrs Swanson still alive? And if not, what will prevent Willy from vanishing into that other world known as Timbuktu?''In this brilliant novel, Auster writes with economy, precision and the quirky pathos of noir, addressing the pernicious ubiquity of American consumerism, the nature of love and the core riddles of ontology. Above all, though, this is the afTrade Review"'A howling success.' Mail on Sunday 'Few novels are as delightful as this... this joy of a book... is as sensitive as it is daring.' Irish Times"

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Book SynopsisAuster''s unforgettable coming-of-age tale from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian) Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Invisible opens in New York City in the spring of 1967 when 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.Three different narrators tell the story, as it travels in time from 1967 to 2007 and moves from New York to Paris and to a remote Caribbean island in a story of unbridled sexual hunger and a relentless quest for justice.With uncompromising insight, Auster takes us to the shadowy borderland between truth and memory, authorship and identity to produce a work of unforgettable power that confirms his reputation as one of America''s most spectacularly inventive writers.

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Book SynopsisAuster''s tale of obsession from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian)The Book of Illusions, written with breath-taking urgency and precision, plunges the reader into a universe in which the comic and the tragic, the real and the imagined, and the violent and the tender dissolve into one another.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 ob

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Book SynopsisAuster''s Booker Prize-shortlisted epic from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian) A masterpiece.' Daily MailAbsorbing and immersive . . . the author's greatest novel.' FTSHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017On March 3rd, 1947, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous but entirely different paths. Family fortunes diverge. Loves and friendships and passions contrast. Each version of Ferguson's story rushes across the fractured terrain of mid-twentieth century America, in this sweeping story of birthright and possibility, of love and the fullness of life itself.Remarkable . . . A novel that contains multitudes.' New York TimesA vast portrait of the turbulent mid-20th century . . . wo

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Book SynopsisThe contemporary classic from ''our supreme post-modernist'' (Ian McEwan) - expanding the possibilities of the noir detective novel - whose writing ''shines with intelligence and originality'' (Don DeLillo)The New York Trilogy is the most astonishing work by America''s most consistently astonishing writer: three interconnected novels that exploit the riveting elements of classic detective fiction to achieve a radical new genre - a profound and unsettling existentialist enquiry in the tradition of Kafka or Borges. 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. The result is the modern novel at its finest which will shock, transfix and astound every reader.''Marks a new departure for the American novel.'' Observer''A shatteringly clever piece of work . . . Utterly gripping, written with an acid sharpness that leaves an indelible dent in the back of the mind.'' Sunday Telegraph''One of the great American prose stylists of our time.'' New York Times''Auster really does possess the wand of the enchanter.'' New York Review of Books

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Book Synopsis''An instant classic that will be read for decades to come.'' Guardian''A stone cold masterpiece.'' Rachel Cooke, Observer''Spectacular.'' PW (starred review)''Something like David Lynch meets Raymond Chandler in Manhattan . . . as unnerving as it is hypnotic.'' Buzz MagIt was a wrong number that started it . . .From its iconic opening, The New York Trilogy famously blurred the lines between postmodern literature and noir fiction. Now, for the first time, all three books have been adapted for this landmark graphic novel, each by a different artist, and all overseen by Paul Auster before his death.In David Mazzucchelli's take on City of Glass, a writer of detective fiction is drawn into a real-life case far stranger than anything he has ever written; in Lorenzo Mattotti's Ghosts, a private eye is hired to stalk a man only to discover a case so puzzling he descends into madness; and in series Director Paul Karasik's The Locked Room, another author hopes to cure his writer's block by solving the disappearance of his childhood friend. As each artist channels the cross-genre thrills of their source material, with its joyous mix of highbrow and lowbrow, the result is a groundbreaking new visual take on a modern classic.

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Book Synopsis''It was a wrong number that started it . . .''Chosen as one of the ''100 Most Important Comics of the Century'', Faber is proud to publish the graphic novel City of Glass for the first time in the UK. As Art Spiegelman explains in his new introduction, David Mazzucchelli and Paul Karasik ''created a strange doppelganger of the original book'' and ''a breakthrough work.'' Paul Auster''s Edgar Award-nominated masterwork has been astonishingly transformed into a new visual language.Trade Review"'It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not...'"

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Book SynopsisAuster''s radical modern ghost story from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian) Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness, novelist Sidney Orr enters a stationery shop in Brooklyn and buys a blue notebook. It is September 18, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, trapped inside a world of eerie premonitions and bewildering events that threaten to destroy his marriage and undermine his faith in reality.If The New York Trilogy was Paul Auster''s detective story, his mesmerizing eleventh novel reads like an old-fashioned ghost story. But there are no ghosts in this book - only flesh-and-blood human beings, wandering through the haunted realms of everyday life. Oracle Night is a narrative tour de force that confirms Auster''s reputation as one of the boldest, most original writers at work in America today.

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Book SynopsisPaul Auster''s magical, surrealist tale from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ''a literary voice for the ages'' (Guardian)''I was twelve years old the first time I walked on water . . .''So begins Mr Vertigo, 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.At the same time a delighted race through 1920s Americana and a richly allusive parable, Mr Vertigo is a ''virtuoso piece of storytelling by a master of the modern American fable.'' (Independent)

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Book Synopsis''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

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Book Synopsis''One of the most original and audacious autobiographies ever written by a writer.'' Le Monde Hand to Mouth tells the story of the young Paul Auster''s struggle to stay afloat. By turns poignant and comic, Auster''s memoir is essentially a book about money - and what it means not to have it. From one odd job to the next, from one failed scheme to another, Auster investigates his own stubborn compulsion to make art and, in the process, treats us to a series of remarkable adventures and unforgettable encounters. Hand to Mouth is essential reading for anyone interested in Paul Auster, in the figure of the struggling artist, in the nature of poverty, or in baseball.

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Book Synopsis'Anyone who has ever tried to do something well, anyone who has ever made personal sacrifices for an art or an idea, will have no trouble understanding what it is about' Paul Auster - The star of MAN ON WIRE offers a meditation on the ecstasy of conquering our fears and reaching for the starsTrade ReviewThis is a book of instructions to those who will dare one day the impossible. It shows the art to fill and illuminate the Void, a void between two towers, two edges of a ravine, or two planets, or the space between heart and mind. A wire connects what would have been separated in loneliness forever. I salute you, Philippe, the Fragile Man of the Wire, the Emperor of the air. I bow my head in reverence -- WERNER HERZOGPetit meditates on his calling, his prose aphoristic, gem-like. The book is about what he does, but it's also about what we all do, if there's anything we're obsessed with, or passionate about. He outlines a whole approach to life, and his vision is pure, primitive and poetic . . . The lessons are simple, universal. Be committed. Feel alive. Give everything * INDEPENDENT *Fascinating. You will learn about the man, his work, his passion, his tenacity and lucidity -- MARCEL MARCEAUPhilippe Petit is an artist whose theatre is the sky -- ROBIN WILLIAMSA remarkable book . . . the high wire is an art of solitude, a way of coming to grips with one's life in the darkest, most secret corner of the self. When read carefully, the book is transformed into the story of a quest, an exemplary tale of one man's search for perfection. As such, it has more to do with the inner life than the high wire . . . anyone who has ever tried to do something well, anyone who has ever made personal sacrifices for an art or an idea, will have no trouble understanding what it is about -- PAUL AUSTER, from the IntroductionWhat sets Philippe in a class all his own is his restless quest to conquer the greatest physical heights, achieving a precise balance of chaos and creativity. He is an inspiration -- MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV

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Book SynopsisFrom Paul Auster, author of the forthcoming 4 3 2 1:  A novel – his debut work of fiction, the first volume in his acclaimed “New York Trilogy” series of novelsNominated for an Edgar Award for Best Mystery of the Year, City of Glass inaugurates the intriguing New York Trilogy of novels that the Washington Post Book World has classified as post-existentialist private eye...It's as if Kafka has gotten hooked on the gumshoe game and penned his own ever-spiraling version. As a result of a strange phone call in the middle of the night, Quinn, a writer of detective fiction and crime books, becomes enmeshed in a case more puzzling than any he might have written. New York Times-bestselling author Paul Auster combines dark humor with Hitchcock-like suspense to City of Glass.

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Book SynopsisThe remarkable, acclaimed series of interconnected detective novels – from the author of 4 3 2 1:  A NovelThe New York Review of Books has called Paul Auster's work “one of the most distinctive niches in contemporary literature.” Moving at the breathless pace of a thriller, this uniquely stylized triology of detective novels begins with City of Glass, in which Quinn, a mystery writer, receives an ominous phone call in the middle of the night. He’s drawn into the streets of New York, onto an elusive case that’s more puzzling and more deeply-layered than anything he might have written himself. In Ghosts, Blue, a mentee of Brown, is hired by White to spy on Black from a window on Orange Street. Once Blue starts stalking Black, he finds his subject on a similar mission, as well. In The Locked Room, Fanshawe has disappeared, leaving behind his wife and baby and

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Book SynopsisFrom Paul Auster, author of the forthcoming 4 3 2 1:  A Novel – his very first book, a moving and personal meditation on fatherhoodThis debut work by New York Times-bestselling author Paul Auster (The New York Trilogy), a memoir, established Auster’s reputation as a major new voice in American writing. His moving and personal meditation on fatherhood is split into two stylistically separate sections. In the first, Auster reflects on the memories of his father who was a distant, undemonstrative, and cold man who died an untimely death. As he sifts through his Father’s things, Auster uncovers a sixty-year-old murder mystery that sheds light on his father’s elusive character. In the second section, the perspective shifts and Auster begins to reflect on his own identity as a father by adopting the voice of a narrator, “A.” Through a mosaic of images, coincidences, and associations “A,” contemplates his

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Book SynopsisA fascinating discussion with one of America's greatest living writers about language, literature, and life.

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Book SynopsisIn 1960 a mysterious car crash killed Albert Camus and his publisher Michel Gallimard, who was behind the wheel. Based on meticulous research, Giovanni Catelli builds a compelling case that the 46-year-old French Algerian Nobel laureate was the victim of premeditated murder: he was silenced by the KGB. The Russians had a motive: Camus had campaigned tirelessly against the Soviet crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and vociferously supported the awarding of the Nobel Prize to the dissident novelist Boris Pasternak, which enraged Moscow. Sixty years after Camus’ death, Catelli takes us back to a murky period in the Cold War. He probes the relationship between Camus and Pasternak, the fraught publication of Doctor Zhivago, the penetration of France by Soviet spies, and the high price paid by those throughout Europe who resisted the USSR.Trade Review'Mr. Catelli's case is compelling ... his book provides a clear and useful window into the currents that political writers were forced to navigate during the Cold War.' -- Wall Street Journal‘An investigation into the astonishing claim that the Nobel prize winner was killed by the Soviet secret police.’ -- The Sunday Times‘Published in English for the first time, the Italian poet and historian Giovanni Catelli argues that Camus, author of the existential masterpiece "The Stranger", was murdered by the Soviet security agency.’ -- The Telegraph'Kisil maintains that Zabrana did his utmost to find "credible and objective sources" of information in the USSR. "It’s possible -- and actually even probable -- that he could have met someone from this circle of people who told him about the assassination of Camus, and who themselves had heard it from someone close to the upper echelons of the Communist Party," he said.' -- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty'Catelli learned not to give up hope in the time since he discovered the testimony of Jan Zábrana. His book reads like a detective novel without resolution or punishment –– no one was or will be jailed for murdering Camus.' -- Pagina 12 (Argentina)'A text of seductive literary, biographical, critical and historical value.' -- Avvenire'Catelli succeeds in convincing us that Camus could have been assassinated by the KGB.' -- Le Monde Libertaire'Fast-paced and entertaining, reads like a spy novel.' -- La Capital (Argentina)'Catelli contends that the KGB was responsible for the auto accident that killed Camus […] More controversially, he also argues that the French government was complicit in the killing.' -- Inside Hook'Eloquently written.' -- Green Left

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Book SynopsisA “compelling” (Los Angeles Times) tale of friendship, betrayal, estrangement, and the unpredictable intrusions of violence in the everyday – from the author of the forthcoming 4 3 2 1:  A NovelSix days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin. . . . So begins the story by Peter Aaron about his best friend, Benjamin Sachs. Sachs had a marriage Aaron envied, an intelligence he admired, a world he shared. And then suddenly, after a near-fatal fall that might or might not have been intentional, Sachs disappeared. Now Aaron must piece together the life that led to Sach's death. His sole aim is to tell the truth and preserve it, before those who are investigating the case invent an account of their own.

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewPraise for The New York Trilogy: “The plots twist, the dialogue snaps and the humor stings. Auster’s obsessions with identity, language, ambiguity and defeat are revealed on the long, tailing walks through the metropolis that give his labyrinthine novels their switchback shape, and New York looms throughout like a modern-day Babel.”– The New York Times Magazine “Eminently readable and mysterious. . .Auster has added some new dimensions to modern literature, and – more importantly even – to our perspectives on our planet.” – Fanny Howe, The Boston Globe “Exhilarating. . .a brilliant investigation of the storyteller’s art guided by a writer who’s never satisfied with just the facts.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer “It’s as if Kafka had gotten hooked on the gumshoe game and penned his own ever-spiraling version.” – The Washington Post “Auster harnesses the inquiring spirit any reader brings to a mystery, redirecting it from the grubby search for a wrongdoer to the more rarified search for self.” – The New York Times Book ReviewPraise for Paul Auster: “One of the great American prose stylists of our time.”—New York Times“Auster really does possess the wand of the enchanter.”—New York Review of Books“One of the great writers of our time.”—San Francisco Chronicle“Contemporary American writing at its best.”—New York Times Book Review, on Invisible“A literary original who is perfecting a hybrid genre of his own.”—Wall Street Journal

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Book SynopsisThis volume of Paul Auster's collected novels includes Travels in the Scriptorium, Man in the Dark, Invisible and Sunset Park.

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