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Man in the Dark is Paul Auster?s brilliant, devastating novel about the many realities we inhabit as wars flame all around us.
Henry Holt
August 2008
On Sale: August 19, 2008
192 pages
ISBN: 0805088393
EAN: 9780805088397
Hardcover
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Fiction
Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughterβs house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would prefer to forgetβhis wifeβs recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughterβs boyfriend, Titus. The retired book critic imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the twin towers did not fall and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, Brillβs story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts the story of his marriage. After she falls asleep, he at last finds the courage to revisit the trauma of Titusβs death. Passionate and shocking, Man in the Dark is a novel of our moment, a book that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - September 10, 2008
Diane Rehm Show - NPR - August 21, 2008
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