The Book of Illusions

Auster’s tale of obsession from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: ‘a literary voice for the ages’ (Guardian)

The Book of Illusions, written with breath-taking urgency and precision, plunges the reader into a universe in which the comic and the tragic, the real and the imagined, and the violent and the tender dissolve into one another.

One man’s obsession with the mysterious life of a silent film star takes him on a journey into a shadow-world of lies, illusions, and unexpected love. After losing his wife and young sons in a plane crash, Vermont professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours mired in grief. Then, watching television one night, he stumbles upon a lost film by silent comedian Hector Mann, and remembers how to laugh . . .

Mann was a comic genius, in trademark white suit and fluttering black moustache. But one morning in 1929 he walked out of his house and was never heard from again. Zimmer’s obsession with Mann drives him to publish a study of his work; whereupon he receives a letter postmarked New Mexico, supposedly written by Mann’s wife, and inviting him to visit the great Mann himself. Can Hector Mann be alive? Zimmer cannot decide – until a strange woman appears on his doorstep and makes the decision for him, changing his life forever.

‘A nearly flawless work . . . Auster will be remembered as one of the great writers of our time.’ San Francisco Chronicle

‘Auster’s elegant, finely calibrated The Book of Illusions is a haunting feat of intellectual gamesmanship.’ TheNew York Times