The Book of Illusions written with breath taking urgency and precision plunges the reader into a universe in which the comic and the tragic the real and the imagined and the violent and the tender dissolve into one another. One man s obsession with the mysterious life of a silent film star takes him on a journey into a shadow world of lies illusions and unexpected love. After losing his wife and young sons in a plane crash Vermont professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours mired in grief. Then watching television one night he stumbles upon a lost film by silent comedian Hector Mann and remembers how to laugh . . .Mann was a comic genius in trademark white suit and fluttering black moustache. But one morning in 1929 he walked out of his house and was never heard from again. Zimmer s obsession with Mann drives him to publish a study of his work; whereupon he receives a letter postmarked New Mexico supposedly written by Mann s wife and inviting him to visit the great Mann himself. Can Hector Mann be alive Zimmer cannot decide until a strange woman appears on his doorstep and makes the decision for him changing his life forever. A nearly flawless work . . . Auster will be remembered as one of the great writers of our time San Francisco Chronicle Auster s elegant finely calibrated The Book of Illusions is a haunting feat of intellectual gamesmanship. The New York Times