Auggie Wren's Christmas Story

Paul Auster’s charming Christmas fable has found new life in this beautifully illustrated edition.

It begins with a dilemma: a writer has been asked by the New York Times to produce a story that will appear in the paper on Christmas morning. The man agrees, but he has a problem: how do you write an unsentimental Christmas story? He unburdens himself to his friend at the local cigar shop, a colourful character called Auggie Wren. ‘A Christmas story? Is that all?’ says Auggie, before striking a deal. For the price of lunch he’ll pass on ‘the best Christmas story you’ve ever heard. And I guarantee every word of it is true.’

What follows is utterly beguiling, a story - involving a blind woman, a lost wallet and a Christmas dinner - in which everything is turned upside down.

Paul Auster is the best-selling author of Invisible, Man in the Dark, The Brooklyn Follies, The Book of Illusions, The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among his other honours are the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke and the Prix Medicis Etranger for Leviathan. He has also been short-listed for both the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions) and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (The Music of Chance). His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

www.paulauster.co.uk