Award-winning author Paul Auster dead at 77: Writer of The New York Trilogy has passed away

Award-winning author Paul Auster, who wrote The New York Trilogy, has died at the age of 77 due to complications from lung cancer. Paul Auster, who was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1947, decided to start his writing life at the age of eight after he wasn’t able to get an autograph from his baseball hero, Willie Mays because neither his parents nor himself was carrying a pencil to the game. In a 1955 essay he wrote: “If there’s a pencil in your pocket, there;s a good chance that one day you’ll feel tempted to start using it.”

When Paul Auster was 14 years old, an incident took place that changed his life forever. In an interview with The Guardian in 2017, Paul Auster revealed that a boy who was only inches away from him, was killed after being struck by lightning. I’ve always been haunted by what happened, the utter randomness of it,” he revealed “I think it was the most important day of my life.”

Paul Auster attended Columbia University and spent four years in France after graduating. It was the sudden death of his father that led him to write The Invention of Solitude in 1982. However, he is best known for The New York Trilogy, which was a series of novels.

The New York Trilogy was originally published sequentially, City of Glass came first in 1985 followed by Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986), It was then collected into a single volume, The Trilogy. Paul Auster’s books have been translated into more than 40 languages, and his novels include Leviathan, Timbuktu and Moon Palace. 

According to The New York Times,  “Writing six hours a day, often seven days a week, he pumped out a new book nearly annually for years. He ultimately published 34 books, accounting for shorter works that were later incorporated into larger books, including 18 novels and several acclaimed memoirs and assorted autobiographical works, along with plays, screenplays and collections of stories, essays and poems.”

Paul Auster had suffered family tragedy and his death comes just two years after his son Daniel Auster and baby granddaughter died. The BBC reported that “In recent years, Auster's own life was struck by tragedy, with his 10-month-old granddaughter Ruby dying after ingesting heroin and his son Daniel, the child's father, dying of an overdose 10 months later.

Prior to his death, Daniel had been found guilty of negligent homicide. Auster never publicly discussed their deaths.”

Paul Auster was married to the author Siri Hustvedt who announced in March 2023 that he had been diagnosed with cancer.