Paul Auster, prolific American author of novels, poems and films propelled onto the international literary scene by his “New York Trilogy”, died of complications from lung cancer at the age of 77, announced the New York Times Tuesday.
Paul Auster died at his home in Brooklyn, New York, said the daily, citing a friend of the novelist, Jacki Lyden. “Paul died this evening, at his home, surrounded by his loved ones,” she said. His wife, the writer Siri Hustvedt, announced last year that he was suffering from cancer.
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New York literary icon
Born in 1947 in the state of New Jersey, Paul Auster became a New York literary icon. Author of more than thirty books, he has been translated into more than 40 languages. Several of his novels explore the theme of chance and coincidences which change the destiny of his characters.
In “City of Glass”, “Revenants” and “The Hidden Room” which form the “Trilogy”, its characters go in search of their identity like detectives in the labyrinth of Manhattan bristling with skyscrapers where everything It’s all reflections and false pretenses.
After studying French, Italian and British literature at Columbia University in New York, he moved to Paris. He lived there from 1971 to 1975 and translated French poets, but he had to take on more jobs before he could make a living from his books. The inheritance from his father, who died in 1979, allowed him to devote himself to writing.
Writer and screenwriter
He became known in 1982 with “The Invention of Solitude”, an autobiographical novel in which he attempts to understand the personality of his father. The novelist broke through on the international scene in 1987, particularly in Europe, with his “New York Trilogy”, a noir novel inspired by the detective genre. A revered writer in France, he received the Foreign Medici Prize for “Leviathan” in 1993.
Also a screenwriter, Paul Auster contributed to the film “Smoke”, which portrays lost souls revolving around a Brooklyn tobacco shop, and its sequel “Brooklyn Boogie”, two films he directed with Wayne Wang. Among his other successful works are “Moon Palace”, “The Book of Illusions” and “Brooklyn Follies”.
In April 2022, he lost his son Daniel Auster, 44, whom he had with the writer Lydia Davis, his first wife. He died of an “accidental overdose” in New York after being charged with involuntary manslaughter for the death at the end of 2021, also by overdose, of his daughter Ruby, aged only ten months.
Despite being diagnosed with cancer the same year, he completed a final book with a nostalgic tone, “Baumgartner”.
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