Timbuktu - by Paul Auster (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Mr. Bones, the canine hero of Paul Auster's astonishing new book, is the sidekick and confidant of Willy G. Christmas, a brilliant and troubled homeless man from Brooklyn. As Willy's body slowly expires, he sets off with Mr. Bones for Baltimore in search of his high school English teacher and a new home for his companion. Mr. Bones is our witness during their journey, and out of his thoughts, Paul Auster has spun one of the richest, most compelling tales in American fiction.

Review Quotes

"Lovely . . . [Paul Auster] is one of our most inventive and least predictable authors." --Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

"A novel of haunted love whose themes loop around one another like glowing coils, connecting gracefully beneath Auster's clear prose, eliciting the fanciful and the tragic." --Oscar Villalon, The San Francisco Chronicle

"After reading Timbuktu, we ramble through our world with reawakened senses and newly alert minds. This is the Auster magic." --Paul Kafka, Boston Globe

"Resonant and tender." --Newsweek

"Enchanting . . . provocative . . . The mind of Mr. Bones moves with mesmirizing fluidity." --Peter Rock, Philadelphia Inquirer

"Affecting . . . a moving story, wonderfully told." --Arizona Republic

"[Timbuktu is] held aloft with audacity and brilliant, idosyncratic language . . . Its risk-taking and brazen energy suggest a writer on the verge of an even more rewarding leap into the air of his own uncharted territory." --Philip Graham, Chicago Tribune

"A beautiful memory piece . . . the dark but tender memoir of a man and his canine sidekick unfolded itself as a tragicomic story of a modern Don Quixote de la Brooklyn." --Dana Coffield, Rocky Mountain News

"A modern parable that invites readers to probe below its deceptively simple surface for deeper truths . . . Auster demonstrates a well-honed talent for illuminating secluded facets of the soul." --Michael Hopkins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

About the Author

Paul Auster is the author of eight previous novels, including The New York Trilogy, The Music of Chance, and Mr. Vertigo. He has also published poems, essays, and two works of autobiography, The Invention of Solitude and Hand to Mouth. He wrote the screenplays for Smoke, Blue in the Face, and Lulu on the Bridge (which he also directed). His work has been translated into twenty-seven languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.