Auster was known in 1982 for his novel “The Invention of Solitude”, which is more like an autobiography in which he tries to clarify the features of his father’s personality.
The wife of the American writer, Paul Auster, announced this week that her husband, who is known for his novels about New York and his marginal characters lost in life, has been diagnosed with cancer.
Author Siri Hastveit, Auster’s wife, said on Instagram that the 76-year-old novelist is currently undergoing treatment at Memorial Sloan Ketrin Cancer Center in New York.
“My husband was diagnosed with cancer in December, after having been ill for several months before,” she added.
“I live in a place I have come to call Cancer Country,” Hastveit said.
Paul Auster has more than thirty books translated into more than forty languages, including Arabic, as he enjoys a wide audience among Arab readers.
In 1982, he became known for his novel “Innovation of Isolation”, which is more like an autobiography in which he tries to clarify the features of his father’s personality.
Auster achieved international fame in 1983 with his novel “The New York Trilogy”, which was inspired by the police novel genre.
His wife did not specify the type of cancer, but she wrote: “Living with a person with cancer who is exposed to bursts of chemotherapy and immunotherapy is an adventure in intimacy and distance.”
“It’s not always easy to walk that tightrope,” she added.
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“I live in a place I’ve come to call Cancer Country,” Hastveit said.
Recruitment CV
Born on February 3, 1947 in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish parents from Poland, Paul Auster is an American novelist, essayist, translator, screenwriter, and poet.
Auster began to realize at the age of sixteen his inclination to be a writer rather than to pursue any other profession.
After graduating from Columbia University with a master’s degree in 1970, Auster moved to France, where he began translating works by French writers and publishing his work in American magazines.
Auster’s fame came with the publication of a series of experimental detective stories, which were published collectively in the 1980s as The New York Trilogy.
Auster’s writings are predominantly concerned with the complex novel, which is characterized by the mysteries of the search for identity and personal meaning.
The Encyclopedia Britannica notes that many of the writer’s novels explore ideas about the self, and the author is often presented in various forms, from the explicit to the hidden, which sparked controversy among critics about the extent to which he employed elements of autobiography.
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Auster’s works have been translated into more than forty languages
Although Auster belonged to a middle-class family, money was a constant cause of family quarrels, which led to his parents’ divorce.
In his novel “The Invention of Solitude”, which belongs to autobiographical literature, Auster talks about his father and how he was a stingy figure in contrast to his extravagant mother, and Auster was confused between them, accusations that angered the family against him.
Auster confirms in his novel, “Blessings of Living”, that he was not attracted to the world of money and business in his society, and he saw manual work as a better way than the boring world of business for him.
In a confrontation the unexpected
Writing for Auster is an intellectual act and a personal pleasure, as well as a way to explore the depths of the self and the other, away from material details.
During a previous interview he gave to the BBC Spanish service in 2020, Oster said, in response to a question clarifying the message he wanted to send through his writing, that he had tried to say over the years that anything could happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. .
“Once we are aware of that, we will be better prepared to face diversity and unexpected things,” he added.
“There is something in the human spirit that seeks stability and certainty, so most people get lost when something unexpected or unusual happens,” he said. “But if we act smart and do what needs to be done, we can get through this.”
Auster lived a life full of turmoil and difficult experiences, and his life experience allowed him to be introduced to different and contradictory personalities at the same time, in the fields of literature, cinema, and community figures.
Auster’s role was not limited to writing novels only, but also wrote screenplays for several films, including “Smoke in 1995.” He also wrote and directed the films “Lulu on the Bridge” in 1998, and “The Inner Life of Martin Frost.” 2007.
After the death of one of his friends due to lightning strikes, Auster appeared in a documentary entitled “The Will of God” in 2009, which deals with the lives of survivors of lightning strikes, and in 2013 he published letters between him and novelist JM Coetzee from South Africa between 2008 and 2011.
Auster had lost his son Daniel in 2022, due to an overdose, during the investigation of Daniel’s responsibility for causing the death of his infant daughter with a drug overdose.
Auster’s latest work is writing a book in 2021 about the life and work of the American writer Stephen Crane, author of the novel “The Red Badge of Courage”, who described him in his previous interview with BBC as “a great writer. He lived a crazy, hectic and adventurous life, which is wonderful. Although he He died at the age of 28, but he left behind published works of 3,000 pages.
