Faber seizes 'heartbreaking' new Auster novel

Faber has seized "a novel of love, memory and grief" by Paul Auster. Baumgartner is Auster’s 18th novel, and his first since the Booker-shortlisted 4 3 2 1. Walter Donohue acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein on behalf of Carol Mann at the Carol Mann Agency.

Carol’s team have also sold rights in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Greek, German and other territories. US and Canadian rights were sold to Morgan Entrekin at Grove.

Baumgartner will publish simultaneously in the US and the UK on 7th November 2023. Rowohlt will also publish the German-language edition in November.

The book tells the story of 71-year-old Baumgartner, struggling to live in the absence of his wife, Anna, who was killed nine years earlier. The publisher said: "Rich with compassion, wit, and Auster’s keen eye for beauty in the smallest, most transient moments of ordinary life, Baumgartner asks: why do we remember certain moments, and forget others?"

Donohue commented: "We are thrilled that, at this point in Paul Auster’s long career at Faber, he has produced this warm and wonderful miniature. Baumgartner is a late masterpiece, which aches with the tremors of enduring love."

Auster is the author of Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Man in the Dark, The Brooklyn Follies, The Book of Illusions and The Music of Chance, among other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Earlier this month Auster’s wife Siri Hustvedt revealed Auster was diagnosed with cancer in December after several months of illness.