Man in the Dark

A "Washington Post "Best Book of the Year

""Man in the Dark" is an undoubted pleasure to read. Auster really does possess the wand of the enchanter."--Michael Dirda, "The New York Review of Books"

From a "literary original" ("The Wall Street Journal") comes a book that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence. Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident at 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 prefer to forget: his wife's recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus. The 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 and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, Brill's story grows increasingly intense, and what he is desperately trying to avoid insists on being told.

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of "The Book of Illusions," and "The New York Trilogy," among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded The Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among his other honors are the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of "Smoke" and the Prix Medicis etranger for "Leviathan." He has also been short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award ("The Book of Illusions"), the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction ("The Music of Chance"), and the Edgar Award ("City of Glass"). His work has been translated into thirty-five languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Longlisted for the International IMPAC Literary Award
A work of fiction with a dark political twist, Paul Auster's "Man in the Dark "speaks to the realities that America inhabits as wars flame around the world. 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 prefer to forget--his wife's recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus. The 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 and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, Brill's story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts the story of his marriage. After she falls asleep, he at last finds the courage to revisit the trauma of Titus's death. "This is perhaps Auster's best book . . . "Man In The Dark" is so unlike anything Auster has ever written that it doesn't make sense to compare it with his earlier work . . . Here we have multiple worlds and three generations . . . Auster's book leaves one with a depth of feeling much larger than might be expected from such a small and concise work of art."--Stephen Elliott, "San Francisco Chronicle"

"'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.' That's the first line from Paul Auster's new novel, "Man in the Dark," and in some ways it's a perfect opening, as accurate as anything in describing the world, or worlds, you'll encounter over the coming 180 pages, a world turning in the head of Auster's 72-year-old everyman, August Brill. Auster has captivated generations of readers with his expansive imagination and style--a style that could be called lazy, in the best sense of the word, like a dog with his tongue out, rolling in the sun. But this, his latest novel, is something else. In this book, Auster has taken a turn similar to the turn Philip Roth took in "American Pastoral" and Leonard Michaels took in his Nachman stories. He's turned his attention outward, to the larger scope of the new century . . . Despite all the threads, which just barely connect, the book works beautifully. And though it's complicated to explain, it's an incredibly clear and easy book to read. Never a minimalist, Auster somehow takes on the largest questions of our time inside small tales of one family. With August as his storyteller, Auster has created a giant canvas out of what seems like a few effortless strokes, strokes often stunning in their simple beauty . . . This is perhaps Auster's best book. But maybe that's an unfair description. "Man in the Dark" is so unlike anything Auster has ever written that it doesn't make sense to compare it with his earlier work. Sure, you can recognize the author of "Oracle Night" and "Brooklyn Follies." But it's as if that gentle mind has been joined by the ghost of Kurt Vonnegut, the adamant pacifist, author of "Slaughterhouse Five" and creator of Billy Pilgrim, a prisoner of war who became 'unstuck in time.' Here we have multiple worlds and three generations, also unstuck in time. But like Vonnegut's classic anti-war novel, Auster's book leaves one with a depth of feeling much larger than might be expected from such a small and concise work of art."--Stephen Elliott, "San Francisco Chronicle
""Are you a Paul Auster fan? Or, perhaps, are you emphatically "not"? Either way, read "Man in the Dark," Auster's latest, which is inventive, tender, and darkly lined with the American predicament . . . Paul Auster has outdone himself, perhaps precisely by not trying to outdo anything."--John Brenkman, "The Village Voice"
"On superficial acquaintance, Paul Auster's new