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Book Cover for: The Music of Chance, Paul Auster

The Music of Chance

Paul Auster

In a Pennsylvania meadow, a young fireman and an angry gambler are forced to build a wall of fifteenth-century stone. For Jim Nashe, it all started when he came into a small inheritance and left Boston in pusuit of "a life of freedom." Careening back and forth across the United States, waiting for the money to run out, Nashe met Jack Pozzi, a young man with a temper and a plan. With Nashe's last funds, they entered a poker game against two rich eccentrics, "risking everything on the single turn of a card." In Paul Auster's world of fiendish bargains and punitive whims, where chance is a shifting and powerful force, there is redemption, nonetheless, in Nashe's resolute quest for justice and his capacity for love.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Penguin Books
  • Publish Date: Dec 1st, 1991
  • Pages: 224
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 7.88in - 5.04in - 0.61in - 0.39lb
  • EAN: 9780140154078
  • Recommended age: 18-UP
  • Categories: LiteraryAbsurdistPsychological

About the Author

Paul Auster was the bestselling author of 4 3 2 1, Sunset Park, The Book of Illusions, Moon Palace, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006, he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature. His other honors include the Prix Médicis étranger for Leviathan, the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Burning Boy, and the Carlos Fuentes Prize for his body of work. His novel 4 3 2 1 was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. Paul Auster died in 2024.

Praise for this book

"A tour de force about freedom and imprisonment, motion and stasis, order and randomness . . . its story beautifully paced and shaped, its tone powerfully ominous."--The Wall Street Journal

"You won't read much better writing anywhere on the lure of the open road--and it catches the reader in a surprisingly strong spell. It's further evidence that Auster is one of the few contemporary American novelists whose work is both original and interesting."--The Washington Post

"Entertaining, provocative, and resonant . . . Auster can write with the speed and skill of a self-assured pool player, sending one bizarre event ricocheting neatly and unexpectedly into the next."--The New York Times

Praise for Paul Auster:

"One of the great American prose stylists of our time."--New York Times

"Auster really does possess the wand of the enchanter."--New York Review of Books

"One of the great writers of our time."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Contemporary American writing at its best."--New York Times Book Review, on Invisible

"A literary original who is perfecting a hybrid genre of his own."--Wall Street Journal