Paul Auster, author of The New York Trilogy, dies aged 77
Paul Auster
Paul Auster, the author of The New York Trilogy and Moon Palace, has died aged 77.
The prolific novelist, who published 34 books in his lifetime, died on Tuesday due to complications from lung cancer.
His death was confirmed by his friend and fellow author, Jacki Lyden.
The Falls author, Joyce Carol Oates, described Auster’s work in 2010 as “highly stylised, quirkily riddlesome postmodernist fiction in which narrators are rarely other than unreliable and the bedrock of plot is continually shifting”.
Auster’s career took off in 1982 with his memoir The Invention of Solitude. His first novel, City of Glass was rejected 17 times before it was taken by a publisher in California in 1985.
“Auster has established one of the most distinctive niches in contemporary literature,” critic Michael Dirda wrote in 2008. “His narrative voice is as hypnotic as that of the Ancient Mariner. Start one of his books and by page two you cannot choose but hear.”
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