Travels in the Scriptorium

A Novel

By: Paul Auster

Narrated by: Dick Hill

An old man sits in a room, with a single door and window, a bed, a desk, and a chair. Each day he awakes with no memory, unsure of whether or not he is locked into the room. Attached to the few objects around him are one-word, hand-written labels, and on the desk is a series of vaguely familiar black-and-white photographs and four piles of paper. Then a middle-aged woman called Anna enters and talks of pills and treatment, but also of love and promises. Who is this Mr. Blank, and what is his fate? What does Anna represent from his past, and will he have enough time to ever make sense of the clues that arise?

After the huge success of The Brooklyn Follies, Travels in the Scriptorium sees Auster return to more metaphysical territory. A dark puzzle, and a game that implicates both reader and writer alike, it is an ingenious exploration of language, responsibility, and the passage of time.

©2007 Paul Auster; (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

"Auster's lean, poker-faced prose creates a satisfyingly claustrophobic allegory." ( Publishers Weekly)

"Archly playful and shrewdly philosophical . . . Celebrates the power of the imagination . . . The labyrinthine nature of the mind…[A] tribute to the transcendence of stories." (Donna Seaman, Booklist)

"Auster has an enormous talent for creating worlds that are both fantastic and believable. . . . His novels are uniformly difficult to put down, a testament to his storytelling gifts." (Timothy Peters, San Francisco Chronicle)

Read by Perkins, the Buttler

Impossible to listen to this hyperpompous reader. I could not stand it and abandoned the book after 20 min. The narrator has no idea of what he is reading, emphasizes the wrong words and pauses awkwardly.

MAJOR Volume problems Too loud and soft

Had to listen with hand on the volume.
Should be volume stabilized.
Recently decreased author’s work.
Hard to judge this dark tale because of the volume issues. I’m probably one of the few to listen to the end. Sad tale.

Awful

Awful horrible garbage trash masquerading as fiction. A travesty of words that insults the English language.