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The literary career of Paul Auster —at least in the field of prose— began with The Invention of Solitude, a book in which the preparations for his father’s funeral served the author to explore the elusive and problematic figure of the dead. In that story, Auster tells a dark anecdote from his family: his grandmother shot and killed his grandfather, who was having an adulterous relationship with another woman. That event fractured the identity of Auster’s father and left a deep mark on the entire family. However, it was not the only bloody incident that the author’s relatives suffered.
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A couple of years ago the surname Auster reached the world press and it did not do so because of an editorial novelty by Paul or because of the release of an album by his daughter. Sophie Auster. The protagonist of the news was Daniel Auster, the writer’s eldest son. The 44-year-old man was accused by the New York police of being responsible for the death of his daughter Ryby, just ten months old. The girl would have accidentally ingested a dose of heroin and fentanyl while she was being cared for by Daniel. This event shocked Paul Auster, who was then facing the rigors of cancer treatment. However, the tragedy did not stop with this death. A few days after Ruby’s death, the police found the body of Daniel, who had taken a high dose of drugs. The initial hypothesis of the overdose pointed to suicide.
These two deaths marked the final months of the American writer. Although recently his wife, also a writer Siri Hustvedt He said that Auster was in good health, the truth is that in his last years the author was away from the public eye. Not even the launch of the novel Baumgartner It completely brought him out of isolation.
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Born in 1947, Paul Auster achieved fame thanks to the New York trilogy, consisting of City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room. These books mix the record of the detective novel with reflections on the meaning of life and chance. Auster also let himself be seduced by cinema: he wrote the scripts for Lulu on the Bridge and The Inner Life of Martin Frostfilms that received a lukewarm reception from critics.
For his books, Auster received several awards, including the Médicis Étranger, the PEN/Faulkner, the Prince of Asturias and the American Book Critics Association Award.
