Paul Auster Popular Books

Paul Auster Biography & Facts

Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American writer and film director. His notable works include The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), Invisible (2009), Sunset Park (2010), Winter Journal (2012), and 4 3 2 1 (2017). His books have been translated into more than forty languages. Early life Paul Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish middle-class parents, of Austrian descent, Queenie (née Bogat) and Samuel Auster. He grew up in South Orange, New Jersey, and Newark, and graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood. Career After graduating from Columbia University with B.A. and M.A. degrees in 1970, he moved to Paris, France, where he earned a living translating French literature. Since returning to the United States in 1974, he has published poems, essays, and novels, as well as translations of French writers such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Joseph Joubert. Following his acclaimed debut work, a memoir titled The Invention of Solitude, Auster gained renown for a series of three loosely connected stories published collectively as The New York Trilogy. Although these books allude to the detective genre, they are not conventional detective stories organized around a mystery and a series of clues. Rather, he uses the detective form to address existential questions of identity, space, language, and literature creating his own distinctively postmodern (and critique of postmodernist) form in the process. According to Auster, "...the Trilogy grows directly out of The Invention of Solitude."The search for identity and personal meaning has permeated Auster's later publications, many of which concentrate heavily on the role of coincidence and random events (The Music of Chance) or, increasingly, the relationships between people and their peers and environment (The Book of Illusions, Moon Palace). Auster's heroes often find themselves obliged to work as part of someone else's inscrutable and larger-than-life schemes. In 1995, Auster wrote and co-directed the films Smoke (which won him the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay) and Blue in the Face. Auster's more recent works, from Oracle Night (2003) to 4 3 2 1 (2017), have also met with critical acclaim. He was on the PEN American Center Board of Trustees from 2004 to 2009, and Vice President during 2005 to 2007.In 2012, Auster said in an interview that he would not visit Turkey, in protest at its treatment of journalists. The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan replied: "As if we need you! Who cares if you come or not?" Auster responded: "According to the latest numbers gathered by International PEN, there are nearly one hundred writers imprisoned in Turkey, not to speak of independent publishers such as Ragıp Zarakolu, whose case is being closely watched by PEN Centers around the world".One of Auster's more recent books, A Life in Words, was published in October 2017 by Seven Stories Press. It brought together three years of conversations with the Danish scholar I.B. Siegumfeldt about each one of his works, both fiction and non-fiction. It has been considered a primary source for understanding Auster's approach to his works.Auster is willing to give Iranian translators permission to write Persian versions of his works in exchange for a small fee; Iran does not recognize international copyright laws. Themes Much of the early scholarship about Auster's work saw links between it and the theories of such French writers as Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and others. Auster himself has denied these influences and has asserted in print that "I've read only one short essay by Lacan, the 'Purloined Letter,' in the Yale French Studies issue on poststructuralism—all the way back in 1966." Other scholars have seen influences in Auster's work of the American transcendentalists of the nineteenth century, as exemplified by Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The transcendentalists believed that the symbolic order of civilization has separated us from the natural order of the world, and that by moving into nature, as Thoreau did, as he described in Walden, it would be possible to return to this natural order. Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Beckett, and Nathaniel Hawthorne have also had a strong influence on Auster's writing. Auster has specifically referred to characters from Poe and Hawthorne in his novels, for example William Wilson in City of Glass or Hawthorne's Fanshawe in The Locked Room, both from The New York Trilogy. Paul Auster's recurring themes include: coincidence frequent portrayal of an ascetic life a sense of imminent disaster an obsessive writer as central character or narrator loss of the ability to understand loss of language loss of money – having a lot, but losing it little by little without earning any more depiction of daily and ordinary life failure absent father writing and story telling, metafiction intertextuality American history American spaceReception "Over the past twenty-five years," opined Michael Dirda in The New York Review of Books in 2008, "Paul Auster has established one of the most distinctive niches in contemporary literature." Dirda also has extolled his loaded virtues in The Washington Post: Ever since City of Glass, the first volume of his New York Trilogy, Auster has perfected a limpid, confessional style, then used it to set disoriented heroes in a seemingly familiar world gradually suffused with mounting uneasiness, vague menace and possible hallucination. His plots – drawing on elements from suspense stories, existential récit, and autobiography – keep readers turning the pages, but sometimes end by leaving them uncertain about what they've just been through. Writing about Auster's most recent novel, 4 3 2 1, Booklist critic Donna Seaman remarked:Auster has been turning readers' heads for three decades, bending the conventions of storytelling, blurring the line between fiction and autobiography, infusing novels with literary and cinematic allusions, and calling attention to the art of storytelling itself, not with cool, intellectual remove, but rather with wonder, gratitude, daring, and sly humor. ... Auster's fiction is rife with cosmic riddles and rich in emotional complexity. He now presents his most capacious, demanding, eventful, suspenseful, erotic, structurally audacious, funny, and soulful novel to date. ... Auster is conducting a grand experiment, not only in storytelling, but also in the endless nature-versus-nurture debate, the perpetual dance between inheritance and free will, intention and chance, dreams and fate. This elaborate investigation into the big what-if is also a mesmerizing dramatization of the multitude of clashing selves we each harbor within. ... A paean to youth, desire, books, creativity, and unpredictability, it is a four-faceted bildungsroman and an ars poetica, in which Auster elucidates his devotion to literature a.... Discover the Paul Auster popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Paul Auster books.

Best Seller Paul Auster Books of 2024

  • Timbuktu synopsis, comments

    Timbuktu

    Paul Auster

    Meet Mr. Bones, the canine hero of Paul Auster's remarkable new novel, Timbuktu. Mr. Bones is the sidekick and confidant of Willy G. Christmas, the brilliant, troubled, and altoget...

  • The Blindfold synopsis, comments

    The Blindfold

    Siri Hustvedt

    From the author of The Blazing World, “a work of dizzying intensity…eloquent and vivid” (Don DeLillo), about a young Midwestern woman who finds herself entangled in intense circums...

  • Oracle Night synopsis, comments

    Oracle Night

    Paul Auster

    Several months into his recovery from a nearfatal illness, thirtyfouryearold novelist Sidney Orr enters a stationery shop in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn and buys a blue not...

  • Envy synopsis, comments

    Envy

    Judy Corbett

    What happens when your beloved only daughter's friend turns out to be a destructive cuckoo in the nest? When girlish charm turns to seduction and teenage friendship to manipulation...

  • The Infinite Blacktop synopsis, comments

    The Infinite Blacktop

    Sara Gran

    Named one of the best books of 2018 by NPRThe “delicious and addictive” (Salon) Claire DeWitt series returns with a thrilling, noirish knockout of a novel that follows three separa...

  • The Invention of Solitude synopsis, comments

    The Invention of Solitude

    Paul Auster

    From 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 Timesbestselling...

  • The Complete Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge synopsis, comments

    The Complete Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge

    One of the major figures of English Romanticism, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834) created works of remarkable diversity and imaginative genius. The period of his creative friends...

  • Hand to Mouth synopsis, comments

    Hand to Mouth

    Paul Auster

    This is the story of a young man's struggle to stay afloat. By turns poignant and comic, Paul Auster's memoir is essentially an autobiographical essay about moneyand what it means...

  • Paul Auster synopsis, comments

    Paul Auster

    François Gavillon

    Ce livre examine l’œuvre en prose de Paul Auster, de L’Invention de la solitude à Léviathan. À la fois chronologique et simultané, l’espace textuel d'Auster est caractérisé par une...

  • Collected Prose synopsis, comments

    Collected Prose

    Paul Auster

    An essential collection from one of the finest thinkers and stylists in contemporary letters.The celebrated author of The New York Trilogy, The Book of Illusions, and Oracle Night ...

  • The New York Trilogy synopsis, comments

    The New York Trilogy

    Paul Auster

    The 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 th...

  • Red Cavalry and Other Stories synopsis, comments

    Red Cavalry and Other Stories

    Isaac Babel, Efraim Sicher & David McDuff

    Throughout his life Isaac Babel was torn by opposing forces, by the desire both to remain faithful to his Jewish roots and yet to be free of them. This duality of vision infuses hi...

  • On Living and Dying Well synopsis, comments

    On Living and Dying Well

    Cicero & Thomas Habinek

    In the first century BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero, orator, statesman, and defender of republican values, created these philosophical treatises on such diverse topics as friendship, re...

  • The Schreber Case synopsis, comments

    The Schreber Case

    Sigmund Freud

    The Schreber Case is distinctive from the other case histories in that it's based on the memoirs of a conjectural patient. Schreber was a judge and doctor of law who lived accordin...

  • Of the Abuse of Words synopsis, comments

    Of the Abuse of Words

    John Locke

    John Locke was one of the greatest figures of the Enlightenment, whose assertion that reason is the key to knowledge changed the face of philosophy. These writings on thought, idea...

  • An Essay Concerning Human Understanding synopsis, comments

    An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

    John Locke & Roger Woolhouse

    In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1690, John Locke (16321704) provides a complete account of how we acquire everyday, mathematical, natural scientific,...

  • Sunset Park synopsis, comments

    Sunset Park

    Paul Auster

    Luminous, passionate, expansive, an emotional tour de force Sunset Park follows the hopes and fears of a cast of unforgettable characters brought together by the mysterious Miles H...

  • Cold Comfort Farm synopsis, comments

    Cold Comfort Farm

    Stella Gibbons

    One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''Brilliant ... very probably the funniest book ever written' Sunday TimesWhen sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at...

  • Invisible synopsis, comments

    Invisible

    Paul Auster

    "One of America's greatest novelists" dazzlingly reinvents the comingofage story in his most passionate and surprising book to dateSinuously constructed in four interlocking parts,...

  • Troubled Waters synopsis, comments

    Troubled Waters

    Rosie Harris

    Let muchloved multimillion copy bestseller Rosie Harris take you back in time with this wonderfully evocative, emotional and atmospheric saga of love, life and trauma. Fans of Dill...

  • The Book of Illusions synopsis, comments

    The Book of Illusions

    Paul Auster

    A man's obsession with a silentfilm star sends him on a journey into a shadow world of lies, illusions, and unexpected love Six months after losing his wife and two young sons in a...

  • The Penguin Book Of Spanish Verse synopsis, comments

    The Penguin Book Of Spanish Verse

    Penguin Books Ltd

    'You have dark eyes. Gleams there that promise darkness'. Spanish poetry is astonishing in its richness and variety. This anthology covers the two great flowerings of Spanish verse...

  • A salto de mata synopsis, comments

    A salto de mata

    Paul Auster

    Auster narra sus primeras experiencias tras sentir la llamada de la escritura, una etapa de desarrollo, supervivencia y empeño por conseguir el dinero que le daría la libertad para...

  • Village Teacher synopsis, comments

    Village Teacher

    Jack Sheffield

    The fourth installment of the hilarious RagleyontheForest village school seriesIt's 1980: recession and unemployment have hit Britain, a royal wedding is on the way, and the whole...

  • The Music of Chance synopsis, comments

    The Music of Chance

    Paul Auster

    An “exceptional” (Los Angeles Times) tale of fate, loyalty, responsibility, and the real meaning of freedom, from the author of the forthcoming 4 3 2 1:  A NovelA finalist for...

  • Russian Thinkers synopsis, comments

    Russian Thinkers

    Isaiah Berlin & Henry Hardy

    Few, if any, Englishlanguage critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture. Russian Thinkers is his unique meditation on the impact that R...

  • Theaetetus synopsis, comments

    Theaetetus

    Plato

    Set immediately prior to the trial and execution of Socrates in 399 BC, Theaetetus shows the great philosopher considering the nature of knowledge itself, in a debate with the geom...

  • The Paris Review Interviews, IV synopsis, comments

    The Paris Review Interviews, IV

    The Paris Review

    For more than fifty years, The Paris Review has brought us revelatory and revealing interviews with the literary lights of our age. This critically acclaimed series continues with ...

  • A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women synopsis, comments

    A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women

    Siri Hustvedt

    A compelling, radical, “richly explored” (The New York Times Book Review), and “insightful” (Vanity Fair) collection of essays on art, feminism, neuroscience, psychology, and philo...

  • The Hitopadesa synopsis, comments

    The Hitopadesa

    M Narayana

    Composed between 800 and 950 AD, Narayana's Hitopadesa is one of the bestknown of all works in Sanskrit literature. A fascinating collection of fables, maxims and sayings in verse,...

  • The Brooklyn Follies synopsis, comments

    The Brooklyn Follies

    Paul Auster

    From the bestselling author of Oracle Night and The Book of Illusions, an exhilarating, whirlwind tale of one man's accidental redemption Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to d...

  • The Lady in the Looking Glass synopsis, comments

    The Lady in the Looking Glass

    Virginia Woolf

    'People should not leave lookingglasses hanging in their rooms any more than they should leave open cheque books or letters confessing some hideous crime.''If she concealed so much...

  • Michael Kohlhaas synopsis, comments

    Michael Kohlhaas

    Heinrich von Kleist & Michael Hofmann

    An extraordinary masterpiece of German literature, now in a gripping new English translation   Michael Kohlhaas has been wronged. First his finest horses were unfairly confisc...

  • Winter Journal synopsis, comments

    Winter Journal

    Paul Auster

    "That is where the story begins, in your body and everything will end in the body as well." On January 3, 2011, exactly one month before his sixtyfourth birthday, internationally a...

  • Memories of the Future synopsis, comments

    Memories of the Future

    Siri Hustvedt

    A provocative, exuberant novel about time, memory, desire, and the imagination from the internationally bestselling and prizewinning author of The Blazing World.A young woman, S.H....

  • Willehalm synopsis, comments

    Willehalm

    Wolfram Eschenbach

    Wolfram von Eschenbach (fl. c. 11951225), best known as the author of Parzival, based Willehalm, his epic poem of military prowess and courtly love, on the style and subject matt...

  • The Power of Dreams synopsis, comments

    The Power of Dreams

    Rosie Harris

    Fans of Dilly Court, Kitty Neale, Emma Hornby and Rosie Goodwin will love this vivid and compelling saga, set around Tiger Bay and Cardiff. Muchloved multimillion copy bestseller ...

  • El cuaderno tachado synopsis, comments

    El cuaderno tachado

    Nicolás Giacobone

    Una novela vertiginosa sobre un cineasta megalómano y su guionista cautivo, a quien obliga a escribirle una obra maestra. Un thriller intelectual escrito en forma de diario.Hasta a...

  • Moon Palace synopsis, comments

    Moon Palace

    Paul Auster & Grez

    The “beautiful and haunting” (San Francisco Chronicle) tale of an orphan’s search for love, for his unknown father, and for the key to the elusive riddle of his fate, from the auth...

  • My Childhood synopsis, comments

    My Childhood

    Maxim Gorky

    Coloured by poverty and horrifying brutality, Gorky's childhood equipped him to understand in a way denied to a Tolstoy or a Turgenev the life of the ordinary Russian. After his ...