A coming-of-age story in four interlocking parts by three different narrators, a tale of sex and obsession.

September 2010 Guest Editor Belle de Jour on Paul Auster...

Auster is a bit of a Marmite – he puts himself fearlessly into everything and you either love that or you hate it. I love it, the endless re-examination of the writer as a character. While I could recommend loads of his books I prefer to think of them as a body of work, with the permutations of facets of personality that you recognise again and again in his work.

Synopsis

Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Invisible opens in New York City in the spring of 1967 when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born, and his silent and seductive girlfriend Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life. Three different narrators tell the story, as it travels in time from 1967 to 2007 and moves from New York to Paris and to a remote Caribbean island in a story of unbridled sexual hunger and a relentless quest for justice. With uncompromising insight, Auster takes us to the shadowy borderland between truth and memory, authorship and identity to produce a work of unforgettable power that confirms his reputation as one of America's most spectacularly inventive writers.

About the Author

Paul Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey in the United States in 1947. He graduated from Columbia University with an MA degree. In 1970 he worked as a merchant seaman on an Esso oil tanker. From 1971 to 1974 he lived in France, spending two years in Paris and one in Provence. After returning to New York in 1974, he began his writing career. Throughout the 1970s he wrote mainly poetry and essays which appeared in various magazines including the New York Review of Books. During the 1980s he concentrated on prose writing: a memoir and four novels were published. His screenplay Smoke and Blue in the Face was published in April 1996 to coincide with the release of the film, and in 1999 Faber published the screenplay Lulu on the Bridge. The Art of Hunger (a collection of essays, interviews and prose) and his Selected Poems were published in November 1998. He is the author of twelve novels: The New York Trilogy, In the Country of Last Things, Moon Palace, The Music of Chance, Leviathan, Mr Vertigo, Timbuktu, The Book of Illusions, Oracle Night, The Brooklyn Follies, Travels in the Scriptorium and Man in the Dark. He also edited the best-selling True Tales of American Life, the NPR National Story Project anthology. He is married with two children and lives in Brooklyn. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation