The Inner Life of Martin Frost - by Paul Auster (Paperback)

About the Book

This novel brings together Auster's talents as a novelist and filmmaker with a work that is tender, moving, and funny. This luminous celebration of the mysteries of love, art, and the imagination is being adapted to the screen for a 2007 release date.

Book Synopsis

A Picador Paperback Original

Written and directed by Paul Auster, the screenplay for The Inner Life of Martin Frost, starring David Thewlis, Irene Jacob, Michael Imperioli, and Sophie Auster.

From The New York Trilogy to The Book of Illusions and 4 3 2 1, Paul Auster, one of America's most spectacularly inventive novelists, established him as an award-winning filmmaker as well, with Smoke, Blue in the Face, and Lulu on the Bridge. Here, The Inner Life of Martin Frost brings together his talents as a novelist and filmmaker with a work that is tender, moving, and funny.

Searching for solitude, the writer Martin Frost borrows a friend's country house. Waking up one morning, he is shocked to find a nearly naked young woman beside him in bed. She also has a key to the house and claims to be the owner's niece. Martin's initial annoyance at Claire's intrusion is rapidly forgotten as he falls passionately in love with her. Even when it is revealed that Claire is not who she claims to be, their idyllic passion continues--until she suddenly falls ill.

The Inner Life of Martin Frost is based on an imaginary film that appears in the author's novel The Book of Illusions. Unlike the fictional Hector Spelling's "lost" 1946 black and white film of the same title, Auster's luminous celebration of the mysteries of love, art, and the imagination was released in 2007.

About the Author

Paul Auster was the bestselling author of 4 3 2 1, Bloodbath Nation, Baumgartner, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature. Among his other honors are the Prix Médicis Étranger for Leviathan, the Independent Spirit Award for the screenplay of Smoke, and the Premio Napoli for Sunset Park. In 2012, he was the first recipient of the NYC Literary Honors in the category of fiction. He was also a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (The Book of Illusions), the PEN/Faulkner Award (The Music of Chance), the Edgar Award (City of Glass), and the Man Booker Prize (4 3 2 1). Auster was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. He died at age seventy-seven in 2024.