Paul Auster

On March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four Fergusons made of the same genetic material, four boys who are the same boy, will go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Loves...

Staff Pick: Paul Auster's City of Glass is the quintessential post-modern detective novel and is the defining work of the New York Trilogy - all three works are distinct and can be read separately, but they are thematically linked. First published in the mid-eighties this remains as fresh and intriguing as it did then. If you like unusual narratives and are prepared to be challenged on what you think a novel should be then this work could be worth...

Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, 'Invisible' opens in New York City 1967, when 21 year-old Adam Walker meets Rudolf Born and his silent and seductive girlfriend Margot. Before long Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life.

Although Paul Auster and J.M. Coetzee had been reading each other's books for years, the two writers did not meet until February 2008. Not long after, Auster received a letter from Coetzee, suggesting they begin exchanging letters on a regular basis and, 'God willing, strike sparks off each other'. 'Here and Now' is the result of that proposal: an epistolary dialogue between two great writers who became great friends.