Paul Auster

Paul Auster, born in 1947, American novelist, short-story writer, and poet, best-known as a chronicler of New York City. He first achieved popular and critical acclaim with the collection of short stories The New York Trilogy (1987). Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey. After receiving his bachelor of arts degree in 1969 and his M.A. degree in 1970, both from Columbia University in New York City, Auster lived in France for four years, during which time he worked as a writer and translator. He returned to New York City in 1974.

Auster began his writing career by producing poetry and essays for the New York Review of Books, Harper’s, and Saturday Review, but it was not until 1978, when he received an inheritance from his father, that he was financially able to become a full-time writer. After the success of The New York Trilogy, Auster turned to writing novels. His fiction is characterized by an often unnerving blend of realism and fantasy that surprises the reader and confounds expectations. Auster’s novels include In the Country of Last Things (1988); Moon Palace (1989); The Music of Chance (1991), which was made into a motion picture in 1993; Leviathan (1992); Mr. Vertigo (1994); and Timbuktu (1999), which was written from the viewpoint of a dog.

Auster has collaborated on two film projects with director Wayne Wang, adapting his own short story “Augie Wren’s Christmas Story” for the film Smoke (1995) and co-directing its improvised companion piece Blue in the Face (1995). He also wrote and directed the film Lulu on the Bridge (1998). Auster has also written the autobiographical works The Invention of Solitude (1982) and Hand to Mouth (1997), and a collection of poems and essays, Groundwork (1990). His Collected Prose was published in 2003.

Auster’s most recent novels are The Book of Illusions (2002), which explores his familiar themes of chance and coincidence; the multi-layered mystery Oracle Night (2003); The Brooklyn Follies (2005), in which a retired insurance man diagnosed with lung cancer is rejuvenated when he returns to his native Brooklyn; and Travels in the Scriptorium (2007), in which a disoriented man tries to piece together his past.