Paul Auster, author of ‘New York Trilogy’, dies

Los Angeles [US], May 2 (ANI): Paul Auster, the prolific American novelist behind the acclaimed ‘New York Trilogy’, has passed away. He was 77.

The update about Auster’s demise was confirmed by his wife and fellow author, Siri Hustvedt, who said that Auster died on Tuesday at their home in Brooklyn. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer in 2022, The Hollywood Reporter stated.

In a statement, Siri said, “The long, rich, often funny, intimate dialogue we had for decades is over but Paul continues to speak, and he continues to tell stories in books that have been translated into over forty languages and are very much alive in me and in the readers who have loved his tales all over the world.”

Last year, Siri revealed that he had cancer. Sharing the news on Instagram, she said he had been diagnosed in December 2022, that he was receiving treatment and that she was living in “Cancerland.”

Auster works include the series “The New York Trilogy” (1987), comprised of “City of Glass” (1985), “Ghosts” (1986) and “The Locked Room” (1986). The trilogy explored various philosophical themes through a postmodern lens of detective and mystery fiction.

The author’s longest and most ambitious work of fiction was 4 3 2 1, published in 2017 and a Booker finalist. The 800-plus page novel is a tale of quadraphonic realism in the post-World War II era, the parallel journeys of Archibald Isaac Ferguson from summer camp and high school baseball to student life in New York and Paris during the mass protests of the late 1960s.

Auster also penned the screenplays for “Smoke” (1995), “Blue in the Face” (1995), “Lulu on the Bridge” (1998) and “The Inner Life of Martin Frost” (2007), directing the latter two and co-directing “Blue in the Face” with Wayne Wang.

In recent years, he published books “Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane” (2021), “Bloodbath Nation” (2023) and his final novel, “Baumgartner” (2023).