The world of letters mourns the death of the prolific American writer Paul Austerwho He died last morning at his home in Brooklyn. (New York) due to lung cancer.
On social networks, writers, journalists and other personalities and institutions from the world of culture mourn the loss of the 77-year-old novelist who, according to many of them, has left its readers orphaned.
The Guadalajara International Fair (FIL), one of the most important in the world in literature in Spanish, reacts sadly on the X network to the death of the author of New York Trilogy either Brooklyn Follies.
“We mourn the death of the American writer Paul Auster (1947-2024) and We fondly remember the meeting with your readers at the FIL Guadalajara in 2017where he received the Carlos Fuentes Medal at the opening of the Literary Hall,” said the institution.
Its Spanish publishing house, Grupo Planeta and Seix Barral, also expresses its deep sorrow for the death of “author and friend Paul Auster (1947-2024).” “We join in the pain of his wife Siri and Sophie, Spencer and Miles, and that of his countless readers,” they say in a message.
“We are very saddened to learn of the passing of nominated for the Booker Prize, Paul Auster, whose work moved readers and influenced writers around the world, and whose generosity was felt in so many other sectors. We extend our deepest condolences to his wife Siri Hustvedt and her family,” they say from the Booker Prize account, one of the most significant in the English language.
“Paul Auster, one of the great American writers, has died. When a writer dies, our love of life dies“, writes the Spanish poet and novelist Manuel Vilas.
For Mauricio Montiel FigueirasMexican writer and editor, Auster was “a fundamental author” for his training. “His work has marked me in very different and very profound ways. I will miss him like so many of his faithful followers,” he adds.
Likewise, the National Center of the Arts of Mexico He adds that “if we do not have art, we will die spiritually”, after learning of the novelist’s disappearance.
“When a poet looks for inspiration in a creator from another country, it is because he is looking for something that is not immediately available in his own language or literature, because he intends to free himself from the confines of his own culture; but always (…) to make it his own” , he maintains in his profile Books and LettersLiterary Magazine of Colombia and Latin America.
Politicians, such as the Spanish Foreign Minister, Jose Manuel Albareshave joined this regret by saying that it supposes “a big loss“. “He leaves us his extraordinary novels with which we will continue seeing the world from Brooklyn and reading about lives that lead us to others,” he laments.
Born into a Jewish family of Austrian descent in 1947 in Newark, New Jersey, Auster made Brooklyn his home and the setting for his novels, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.
In all his works he built literary labyrinths, like Russian dolls or matryoshkas, in which he mixed fiction, reality and autobiography, and with which he captured millions of readers around the world.
