The Book of Illusions Aug 2002 isbn: 0805054081 $24.00 buy

Paul Auster, September 18

Wednesday, 6pm
Sackler Museum
485 Broadway, Cambridge
tickets available in store 4 weeks before event

"Auster's signature fascination with the capriciousness of fate and adept use of the classic story-within-the-story motif are writ larger than ever in his brilliant, sage, and suspenseful tenth novel...It all begins when a Vermont English professor, paralyzed with grief over the loss of his wife and young sons in a plane crash, sees a clip of silent film star and director Hector Mann's witty shtick on television and laughs for the first time in months. David embarks on an intense study of Mann's nearly forgotten work, an arduous quest given the fact that Mann disappeared at the peak of his powers, then ends up embroiled in Mann's complicated and tragic secret life after a woman with a prominent birthmark and a gun takes him to New Mexico. Auster limns Mann's many-layered cinematic and earthly worlds in mesmerizing and voluptuous detail within an artful, poignantly metaphysical, and delectably Hitchcockian tale of mayhem, murder, and myriad illusions within illusions." -- Booklist