In 2012, Auster said in an interview that he would not visit Turkey, in protest at its treatment of journalists. He was on the PEN American Center Board of Trustees from 2004 to 2009, and Vice President during 2005 to 2007. Auster's more recent works, from Oracle Night (2003) to 4 3 2 1 (2017), have also met with critical acclaim. 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 heroes often find themselves obliged to work as part of someone else's inscrutable and larger-than-life schemes. 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).

According to Auster, '.the Trilogy grows directly out of The Invention of Solitude.' 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. Although these books allude to the detective genre, they are not conventional detective stories organized around a mystery and a series of clues. 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.Īuster greeting Israeli President Shimon Peres with Salman Rushdie and Caro Llewellyn in 2008įollowing 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.

degrees in 1970, he moved to Paris, France, where he earned a living translating French literature. Career Īfter graduating from Columbia University with B.A. He grew up in South Orange, New Jersey, and Newark, and graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood. Paul Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish middle-class parents, of Austrian descent, Queenie (née Bogat) and Samuel Auster. His books have been translated into more than forty languages. 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). Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American writer and film director.

Author of the new york trilogy