The writer Paul Auster, sacred monster of American literature, is fighting against cancer
The American writer Paul Auster, who conquered France in the 1980s with his New York novels populated by marginal and disoriented characters, suffers from cancer, announced this Saturday March 11 his wife, the writer Siri Hustvedt. “My husband was diagnosed with cancer in December after being ill for the months leading up to it,” she wrote on her Instagram account.
“I live in a place that I ended up calling cancerland “. “Many people have crossed its borders, either because they are or have been sick themselves, or because they love someone, a parent, child, spouse or friend who has or has had a cancer,” she added. She does not specify the type of cancer from which her husband suffers or his prognosis.
“Living with someone who has cancer and is bombarded with chemotherapy and immunotherapy is an adventure of closeness and separation,” adds Siri Hustvedt. The 76-year-old writer is being treated at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
A Virulent Charge Against America Today
Sacred monster of American literature, Paul Auster is the author of more than thirty books which have been translated into more than 40 languages, including “City of Glass” and “Leviathan”. In 1982, “The Invention of Solitude”, an autobiographical novel in which he tries to identify his father’s personality, was hailed by critics, particularly in France, where it was published by Actes Sud. It is with his “New York Trilogy”, noir novels inspired by the detective genre, that he becomes essential on the international scene.
He just published “Blood Country” (Actes Sud, 208 p., 26 euros), one of his most virulent charges against what has become of America, where he questions the abuses linked to the use of firearms over the centuries. A story carried by poetic and violent words, intimate memories and philosophical reflections that face the chilling shots of Spencer Ostrander, a photographer who has long traveled the United States to document the horror of mass killings.
Fine connoisseur of the language of Molière, Paul Auster has a very close relationship with France where he sold tens of thousands of copies of his novels. As a student, he lived in Paris where he was a tormented student, living in shabby rooms.
In April 2022, he had been affected by a terrible tragedy with the death of his son Daniel, aged 44, found dead on a subway platform. The latter had just been charged with manslaughter after the overdose death of his ten-month-old daughter.
