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More copies of this ISBN:Travels in the Scriptoriumby Paul Auster
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:A man pieces together clues to his past — and the identity of his captors — in this fantastic, labyrinthine novel. An old man awakens, disoriented, in an unfamiliar chamber. With no memory of who he is or how he has arrived there, he pores over the relics on the desk, examining the circumstances of his confinement and searching his own hazy mind for clues. Determining that he is locked in, the man — identified only as Mr. Blank — begins reading a manuscript he finds on the desk, the story of another prisoner, set in an alternate world the man doesn't recognize. Nevertheless, the pages seem to have been left for him, along with a haunting set of photographs. As the day passes, various characters call on the man in his cell — vaguely familiar people, some who seem to resent him for crimes he can't remember — and each brings frustrating hints of his identity and his past. All the while an overhead camera clicks and clicks, recording his movements, and a microphone records every sound in the room. Someone is watching. Both chilling and poignant, Travels in the Scriptorium is vintage Auster: mysterious texts, fluid identities, a hidden past, and, somewhere, an obscure tormentor. And yet, as we discover during one day in the life of Mr. Blank, his world is not so different from our own. Review:"Determined reading keeps the mind's attention. And you will want to be very determined in reading Paul Auster's fictional treatise on crime and amnesia, 'Travels in the Scriptorium.' It's not the characters or plot that is difficult to keep tabs on but your own emotions, as this is a chilling story of isolation. The setup is this: An old man, known only as Mr. Blank, wakes up in a sparsely... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Review:"Say what one will about Auster's repetition of devices - the book within a book, the off-stage tormentor, the loss of memory - he has become frightfully good at manipulating a good story out of them." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Review:"Auster fans will recognize a parade of characters from earlier works, reaching back to his famed New York Trilogy...as Auster coyly celebrates the power of the imagination and marvels over the labyrinthine nature of the mind in an archly playful and shrewdly philosophical tribute to the transcendence of stories." Booklist Review:"With a Kafkaesque protagonist in an M.C. Escher plot, Auster...returns to the themes of identity, memory, illusion and creativity that have marked his work since his breakthrough New York Trilogy." Kirkus Reviews Synopsis:Both chilling and poignant, this labyrinthine novel by the author of "Leviathan" follows a man who awakens disoriented in an unfamiliar chamber, as he pieces together clues to his past--and the identity of his captors.
Synopsis:An old man sits in a room, with a single door and window, a bed, a desk and a chair. Each day he awakes with no memory, unsure of whether or not he is locked into the room. Attached to the few objects around him are one-word, hand-written, labels and on the desk is a series of vaguely familiar black-and-white photgraphs and four piles of paper. Then a middle-aged woman called Anna enters and talks of pills and treatment, but also of love and promises. Who is this man, and what is his fate? What does Anna represent from his past - and will he have enough time to ever make sense of the clues that arise? A dark puzzle, and a game that implicates both reader and writer alike, TRAVELS IN THE SCRIPTORIUM is an ingenious exploration of language, responsibility and the passage of time. About the AuthorPaul Auster is the bestselling author of The Brooklyn Follies, Oracle Night, and The Book of Illusions, among many other works. I Thought My Father Was God, the NPR National Story Project Anthology, which he edited, was also a national bestseller. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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