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The 2007 Award

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster

 

 

Nominated by:

  • Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli/Biblioteca Nazionale "Vitt.Em.111" Napoli,Naples, Italy
  • Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker, Arhus, Denmark
  • Sølvberget KF - Stavanger Bibliotek og Kulturhus, Stavanger, Norway
  • Consorci de Biblioteques de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

 

Publisher of Nominated Edition
 Henry Holt & Company ISBN 0805077146
Faber & Faber ISBN 0571224970

 

the complete A-Z listing of nominated authors
ABOUT THE BOOK
'I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn, and so the next morning I traveled down there from Westchester to scope out the terrain . . .'
So begins Paul Auster's remarkable new novel, The Brooklyn Follies. Set against the backdrop of the contested US election of 2000, it tells the story of Nathan and Tom, an uncle and nephew double-act. One in remission from lung cancer, divorced, and estranged from his only daughter, the other hiding away from his once-promising academic career, and, indeed, from life in general.
Having accidentally ended up in the same Brooklyn neighbourhood, they discover a community teeming with life and passion. When Lucy, a little girl who refuses to speak, comes into their lives, there is suddenly a bridge from their pasts that offers them the possibility of redemption.
Infused with character, mystery and humour, these lives intertwine and become bound together as Auster brilliantly explores the wider terrain of contemporary America - a crucible of broken dreams and of human folly.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey in the United States in 1947. He graduated from Columbia University with an MA degree. In 1970 he worked as a merchant seaman on an Esso oil tanker. From 1971 to 1974 he lived in France, spending two years in Paris and one in Provence. After returning to New York in 1974, he began his writing career.
Throughout the 1970s he wrote mainly poetry and essays which appeared in various magazines including the New York Review of Books. During the 1980s he concentrated on prose writing: a memoir and four novels were published.
His screenplay Smoke and Blue in the Face was published in April 1996 to coincide with the release of the film, and in 1999 Faber published the screenplay Lulu on the Bridge. The Art of Hunger (a collection of essays, interviews and prose) and his Selected Poems were published in November 1998.
He is the author of ten novels, including The New York Trilogy, In the Country of Last Things, The Invention of Solitude, Moon Palace, The Music of Chance, Leviathan, Mr Vertigo, Timbuktu, The Book of Illusions and Oracle Night. An eleventh, Brooklyn Follies, is published in December 2005. He also edited the best-selling True Tales of American Life, the NPR National Story Project anthology.
He is married with two children and lives in Brooklyn.


 

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