In the Country of Last Things

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Man in the Dark, The Brooklyn Follies, The Book of Illusions and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Among his other honours are the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke and the Prix Médicis Étranger for Leviathan. He has also been shortlisted for both the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions) and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (The Music of Chance). His work has been translated into more than forty languages.

He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

'That is how it works in the City. Every time you think you know the answer to a question, you discover that the question makes no sense . . .'

This is the story of Anna Blume and her journey to find her lost brother, William, in the unnamed City. Like the City itself, however, it is a journey that is doomed, and so all that is left is Anna's unwritten account of what happened.

Paul Auster takes us to an unspecified and devastated world in which the self disappears amidst the horrors that surround us. But this is not just an imaginary, futuristic world: like the settings of Kafka stories, it is one that echoes our own, and in doing so addresses some of our darker legacies.

In the Country of Last Things is a tense, psychological take on the dystopian novel. It continues Auster's deep exploration of his central themes: the modern city, the mysteries of storytelling, and the elusive and unstable nature of truth.

In the Country of Last Things is Paul Auster's dystopian future; a tense and compelling novel, '[a]s harrowing and intellectually playful as Beckett . . .' (Time Out)

In the Country of Last Things is Paul Auster's dystopian future; a tense and compelling novel, '[a]s harrowing and intellectually playful as Beckett ...' (Time Out)