Man in the Dark - Hardcover

Auster, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1410410226 ISBN 13: 9781410410221

Publisher: Thorndike Pr, 2008

Synopsis

'I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness.'

Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter's house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would rather forget - his wife's recent death and the horrific murder, in Iraq, of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus. Brill, a retired book critic, imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the Twin Towers did not fall on 9/11, and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, Brill's story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts another hidden story, this time of his own marriage. After she falls asleep, he at last finds the courage to revisit the trauma of Titus's death.

Passionate and shocking, political and personal: Man in the Dark is a novel that reflects the consequences of 9/11, that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.

About this title

Review:

"Works beautifully . . . This is perhaps Auster's best book. Like Vonnegut's classic anti-war novel ["Slaughterhouse Five"], Auster's book leaves one with a depth of feeling much larger than might be expected from such a small and concise work of art."--"San Francisco Chronicle """Man in the Dark" is at once haunting, thought-provoking, emotional, and compellingly readable."--"The Philadelphia Inquirer" "Remarkable . . . "Man in the Dark "possesses a grand and generous heart."--"The Boston Globe ""Auster's latest astute and mesmerizing metaphysical fiction . . . A master of the matter-of-factly fantastic, Auster tells an utterly authentic story of culpability and survival, the vortex of loss, and our endless struggle to translate terror into understanding."--"Booklist "(starred review) "A novel that kept my attention from the first page all the way to the last. Frankly, it hypnotized me."--NPR's "All Things Considered ""[Auster's] magic has never flourished m

Book Description:

Man in the Dark by Paul Auster is a devastating novel about the many realities we inhabit as war and conflict flame all around us.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorndike Pr
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1410410226
• ISBN 13: 9781410410221
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 243