News about Paul Auster

Novelist Paul Auster has died aged 77 following a lengthy battle with lung cancer , just two years after the deaths of his son and granddaughter who had died from overdoses. The iconic writer, and author behind the award-winning novels The New York Trilogy, passed away on Tuesday with his death confirmed by his friend and fellow novelist Jacki Lyden. Auster had penned an impressive 34 books during the span of his career, with his last - Baumgartner - being released this year. The American author became widely-recognised for his 'highly stylised, quirkily riddlesome postmodernist fiction in which narrators are rarely other than unreliable and the bedrock of plot is continually shifting,' the novelist Joyce Carol Oates wrote on the late writer in 2010. But the tragic news of his death comes just two years after tragedy struck his family after his son Daniel Auster, 44, and his 10-month-old granddaughter Ruby died of drug overdoses.

During a rally on Friday on the steps of the main branch of the New York Public Library, a week after being assaulted onstage in the western part of the state and hospitalized with stab wounds, friends and colleagues spoke out on Salman Rushdie's behalf. Rushdie's health has improved, and he has been deprived of a ventilator, according to his literary agent. Those who expressed genuine desire for a full recovery were Paul Auster, Jeffrey Eugenides, Tina Brown, and Kiran Desai. Rushdie was described as an inspiration and defender of free expression in stories, essays, and speeches, including from 'The Satanic Verses,' the 1988 book that was criticized by some Muslims as blasphemous.'