The Book of Illusions (AUSTER, Paul)

Six months after losing his wife and two young sons in an airpiane crash, Vermont professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours in a blur of alcoholic grief and self-pity. Then, watching television one night, he stumbles upon a clip from a lost film by the silent comedian Hector Mann. Zimmers interest is piqued, and he soon finds himself embarking on a journey around the world to study the works of this mysterious figure, who vanished from sight in 1929.

Who was Hector Mann? An Argentinian-born comic genius, with a signature white suit and fluttering black mustache, a master of “backpedals and dodges . . . sudden torques and lunging pavanes . . . double takes and hop-steps and rhumba swivels.” Presumed dead for sixty years, he had flashed briefly across American movie screens, tantalizing the public with the promise of a brilliant future, and then, just as the silent era came to an end, he walked out of his house one January morning and was never heard from again.

Zimmer's research leads him to write the first full-length study of Hector's films. When the book is published the following year, a letter turns up in Zimmers mailbox bearing a return address from a small town in New Mexico—supposedly written by Hector s wife. “Hector has read your book and would like to meet you. Are you interested in paying us a visit?” Is the letter a hoax, or is Hector Mann still alive? Torn between doubt and belief, Zimmer hesitates, until one night a strange woman appears on his doorstep and makes the decision for him, changing his life forever.

Written with breathtaking urgency and precision, this stunning novel plunges the reader into a universe in which the comic and the tragic, the real and the imagined, the violent and the tender dissolve into one another. With The Book of Illusions, one of America's most powerful and original writers has written his richest, most emotionally charged work yet.

“Paul Auster has been an UNSWERVING VOICE NO MATTER WHAT FORM HE CHOOSES, NO MATTER WHAT TALE HE IMAGINES AND TELLS. A GENEROUS HEART, ALWAYS. A STYLE ON THE HIGH WIRE, ALWAYS.” —Michael Ondaatje

“Through all its dark and delightful twists and turns The Book of Illusions is suffused with warmth and illuminated by its narrator’s hard-won wisdom. This artful and elegant novel may be Auster’s best ever.” —Peter Carey

"An enthralling new summit in Paul Auster’s art." —Jonathan Lethem

"A literary original who is perfecting a genre of his own." —Richard Locke, The Wall Street Journal

“He can write with the speed and skill of a self-assured pool player, sending one bizarre event ricocheting neatly and unexpectedly into the next. . . creating a narrative that continually manages to elude our expectations.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times