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Travels in the Scriptorium
by Paul Auster

Travels in the Scriptorium Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher 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:

"On the centennial year of Samuel Beckett's birth, Auster's new novel nods to the old master. We open with a man sitting in a room. The man doesn't remember his name, and a camera hidden in the ceiling takes a picture of him once a second. The man — whom the third-person narrator calls Mr. Blank — spends the single day spanned by the book being looked after, questioned and reading a fragmentary narrative written by a man named Sigmund Graf from a country called the Confederation who has been given the mission of tracking down a renegade soldier named Ernesto Land. During the course of the day, a former policeman, a doctor, two attendants and Mr. Blank's lawyer visit the room, and Mr. Blank learns he is accused of horrible crimes. (His lawyer claims he is accused of everything 'from conspiracy to commit fraud to negligent homicide. From defamation of character to first-degree murder.') But this may or may not be true — the narrative veers toward ambiguity. While Auster's lean, poker-faced prose creates a satisfyingly claustrophobic allegory, the tidy, self-referential ending lends a writing-exercise patina to the work." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

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.

About the Author

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of twelve previous novels, including The Brooklyn Follies, Oracle Night, The Book of Illusions, and Timbuktu. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Brooklyn.

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
pink_goth_princess, November 25, 2007 (view all comments by pink_goth_princess)
the book just makes you keep on reading. enjoy!
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780805081459
Author:
Auster, Paul
Publisher:
Henry Holt & Company
Author:
Auster, Paul
Subject:
General
Subject:
Psychological
Subject:
Suspense
Subject:
General Fiction
Subject:
Older men
Publication Date:
January 2007
Binding:
Hardcover
Language:
English
Pages:
145
Dimensions:
8.70x5.82x.64 in. .66 lbs.