Paul Auster, an American novelist known for his literary works about outcasts and downtrodden people, is battling cancer, according to his wife.
According to a post on Instagram by his wife and colleague author Siri Hustvedt, Auster, 76, is receiving treatment at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
“My husband was diagnosed with cancer in December after having been ill for several months before that,” she wrote.
“I have been living in a place I have come to call Cancerland.”
“Many people have crossed its borders either because they are or have been sick themselves or love someone, a parent, child, spouse, or friend who has or had cancer,” she wrote.
More than 30 works by Auster have been translated into more than 40 different languages. His 1982 memoir “The Invention of Solitude,” a melancholy account of his father, catapulted him to stardom.
He then released “The New York Trilogy,” a noir-style mystery novel, as a follow-up.
Hustvedt failed to mention her husband’s cancer classification or outlook.
“Living with someone who has cancer and is being bombed with chemotherapy and immunotherapy is an adventure in closeness and separation,” she wrote. “This tightrope isn’t always easy to walk…”
