4 3 2 1 - Hardcover

Auster, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571324622 ISBN 13: 9780571324620

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2017

Synopsis

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017

On March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four Fergusons made of the same genetic material, four boys who are the same boy, will go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Loves and friendships and intellectual passions contrast. Chapter by chapter, the rotating narratives evolve into an elaborate dance of inner worlds enfolded within the outer forces of history as, one by one, the intimate plot of each Ferguson's story rushes on across the tumultuous and fractured terrain of mid twentieth-century America. A boy grows up-again and again and again.

As inventive and dexterously constructed as anything Paul Auster has ever written 4 3 2 1 is an unforgettable tour de force, the crowning work of this masterful writer's extraordinary career.

About this title

Review:

Auster truly is a master of his art. (Harper's Bazaar)

[Auster is] ... A joy to read. (The Economist)

A master of the modern American fable (The Independent)

Auster's writing is stunning. (Spectator)

A remarkable writer whose work needs to be read in totality (Sunday Herald)

There is still a hint of the magical in the every day events that he chronicles. (Tom Cox The Times)

Auster's dazzling 880-page, brick-like 17th novel is, according to many, his greatest so far. In this ambitiously wide-angled panorama of American life between 1947 and 1971, we follow Archie Ferguson, a smart New Jersey kid, along four alternative destinies. An immersive, challenging read. (Financial Times)

From the Author:

Paul Auster is the best-selling author of Man in the Dark, The Brooklyn Follies, The Book of Illusions, The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among his other honours are the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke and the Prix Medicis Etranger for Leviathan. He has also been short-listed for both the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions) and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (The Music of Chance). His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0571324622
• ISBN 13: 9780571324620
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 880