A graphic novel classic with a new introduction by Art Spiegelman

Quinn writes mysteries. The Washington Post has described him as a "post-existentialist private eye." An unknown voice on the telephone is now begging for his help, drawing him into a world and a mystery far stranger than any he ever created in print.

Adapted by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli, with graphics by David Mazzucchelli, Paul Auster's groundbreaking, Edgar Award-nominated masterwork has been astonishingly transformed into a new visual language.

"Karasik and Mazzucchelli's 1994 comics adaptation of Auster's existentialist mystery novel, reprinted here with an introduction by Art Spiegelman, has been a cult classic for years. The Comics Journal named it one of the 100 best comics of the century. Miraculously, it deepens the darkness and power of its source. Auster's novel (about a novelist named Quinn who's mistaken for a detective named Paul Auster and loses his mind and identity in the course of a meaningless case) zooms around in metafictional spirals, but it doesn't have a lot of visual content. In fact, it's mostly about the breakdown of the idea of representation and the widening chasm between signifier and signified. So the artists, perversely and brilliantly, play fast and loose with the text. Mazzucchelli draws everything in a bluntly sketched, bold-lined style, and having set up a suitably film noir mood at the beginning, he substitutes literal depictions of what's happening for symbolic or iconic images wherever possible. One character's monologue about the loss of meaning in his speech is drawn as a long zoom down his throat, followed by Charon arising from a void, a cave drawing, a series of holes and symbols of muteness and finally a broken marionette at the bottom of a well. This reflected, shattered Glass introduces a whole new set of resonances to Auster's story, about the things images can and can't represent when language fails. (July)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"This is a masterly adaptation by Karasik and Mazzucchelli...of Auster's 1985 novel of the same title." Library Journal

"Auster's novella...holds up in this adaptation....Karasik and Mazzucchelli...streamline and focus the story without sacrificing too much of Auster's intent. Mazzucchelli's simple, straightforward artwork is ultimately what makes this version really work..." School Library Journal

"Karasik and Mazzucchelli's bold-lined black-and-white artwork is a fine match for Auster's original wordage." The Washington Post

A mystery writer assumes a detective's identity and embarks on a bizzare case: he must protect a man from his criminally insane father, and as he follows the elusive criminal, he embarks on a mission that takes him to the depths of his own soul. Auster's In the Country of Last Things is being published this month by Viking.

Paul Auster is the author of eleven novels, most recently Oracle Night. His previous two novels, The Book of Illusions and Timbuktu, were national bestsellers. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.