In Timbuktu, troubled Brooklyn poet-saint Willy G. Christmas embarks on one last great adventure in the company of his canine sidekick Mr Bones. In The Book of Illusions a grieving professor finds his obsession with the true-life story of a great silent comedian leading him into a mysterious shadow-world. In Oracle Night a novelist lately recovered from near-fatal illness falls under the spell of a blank notebook that is seemingly the source of eeire premonitions and bewildering events. And in The Brooklyn Follies an uncle and his nephew, both wounded by past misfortunes, wind up in the same Brooklyn neighbourhood and find their lives profoundly affected by a little girl who refuses to speak. Highly varied yet instantly recognisable, these four novels comprise the most recent chapter in the ongoing career of an author now responsible for ten great American novels.

'Auster has an enormous talent for creating worlds that are both fantastic and believable . . . His novels are uniformly difficult to put down, a testament to his storytelling gifts.' San Francisco Chronicle