Man in the Dark: A Novel

A Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Man in the Dark is an undoubted pleasure to read. Auster really does possess the wand of the enchanter.--Michael Dirda The New York Review of Books. From a literary original (The Wall Street Journal) comes 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. Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident at his daughters 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 forget: his wifes recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughters 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 Brills story grows increasingly intense and what he is desperately trying to avoid insists on being told.