UN NOUVEL AUSTER

Paul Auster August 2008
MAN IN THE DARK

A man lies in the dark telling himself stories in an attempt to hide from his fears. The man is August Brill, who is seventy two years old and living in a house of mourning in Vermont with his daughter and grand-daughter. Someone has been murdered, and in order to combat sleeplessness Brill tells himself stories. Brill imagines America at war with itself. Following the 2000 election results riots led to secession as state after state pulled away from the federation. And so while George W Bush rules some states, the independents are beyond his reach - and the war between the two is very bloody indeed. In this parallel universe Owen Brick, a small time magician and children’s party entertainer from NY, finds himself waking up in a ditch, at the mercy of another man’s imagination and in a country at war. As August Brill tells stories in the dark, the imagined and the real merge, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. A love story, that is also a story of betrayal and emotional violence, finally leads him to the story of another war and a grotesquely violent death.