A Life in Words

Paul Auster’s A Life in Words—a wide-ranging dialogue between Auster and the Danish professor I. B. Siegumfeldt—is a remarkably candid and sharply focused investigation into one writer’s art, craft, and life. It includes many revelations that have never been shared before. This is a book that’s full of surprises, composed of spoken words that sometimes jump off the page like good drama.
           
The conversations between Auster and Siegumfeldt went on for three years, starting in 2011 and continuing after there was a complete draft in revisions. All twenty-one of Auster’s narrative works are covered, as well as all the themes and obsessions that drive the work, and the man."I believe this is a very important book for people who want to know what it means to be a writer." —Barry Gifford

“The most distinguished American writer of [his] generation . . . indeed its only author . . . with any claim to greatness.” –The Spectator (UK)

“One of the great writers of our time.”–San Francisco Chronicle

"Nabokov once said 'I divide literature into two categories, the books I wish I had written, and the books I have written.' In the former category I would put books by Kurt Vonnegut, Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Paul Auster." —Umberto Eco (in the Paris Review)PAUL AUSTER is one of the very few giants of English-language literature who has successfully made the leap from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. A poet and translator before he achieved international prominence as a memoirist and novelist, Auster continues to challenge and dazzle his readers in America and around the world. His most recent novel is 4 3 2 1.

I. B. SIEGUMFELDT is an associate professor of English, Germanic, and Romance Studies at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the driving force behind the university's forthcoming Paul Auster Center.