Paul Auster 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.
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. His other successful works include “Moon Palace”, “The Book of Illusions” and “Brooklyn Follies”.
A revered writer in France, which he considers his “second country”, he received the Foreign Medici Prize for “Leviathan” in 1993. An outspoken democrat, he denounced the Bush years in one of his books.
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 following 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 one last book, with a nostalgic tone, “Baumgartner”.
