Book description
Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car
accident. Plagued by insomnia, he tries to push back thoughts of
things he would prefer to forget - his wife's recent death and the
horrific murder of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus - by telling
himself stories. He 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, and the 2000 election results led to secession,
as state after state pulled away from the union, and a bloody civil
war ensued. Brill gradually opens up to his granddaughter, recounting
the story of his marriage and confronting the grim reality of Titus's
death. Man in the Dark is a novel of our time, a book that forces us
to confront the blackness of night whilst also celebrating the
existence of ordinary joys in a brutal world.
Paul Auster was born in New Jersey in 1947. After attending
Columbia University he lived in France for four years. Since 1974 he
has published poems, essays, novels, screenplays and translations. He
lives in Brooklyn, New York.
