Travels in the Scriptorium

by Paul Auster

An old man sits in a room, with a single door and a window, a bed, a desk and a chair. Each day he awakes with no memory, unsure of whether or not he is locked into the room. Attached to the few objects around him are one-word, hand-written labels and on the desk is a series of vaguely familiar black-and-white photographs and four piles of paper. Then a middle-aged woman called Anna enters and talks of pills and treatment, but also of love and promises.
Who is this Mr Blank, and what is his fate? What does Anna represent from his past - and will he have enough time to ever make sense of the clues that arise?
After the huge success of The Brooklyn Follies, Travels in the Scriptorium sees Auster return to more metaphysical territory. A dark puzzle and a game that implicates both reader and writer alike, it is an ingenious exploration of language, responsibility and the passage of time.

(From Publisher)

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.

The use of an ingenious exploration of language that requires a careful determined reading. He leads the reader to a puzzle, a fierce game, a claustrophobic condition, exploiting emotions. A reflection of metaphysical problems such as guilt misunderstanding and loneliness.