4 3 2 1
A Novel
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- USD 11.99
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- USD 11.99
Descripción editorial
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
A New York Times , Los Angeles Times , Boston Globe , and Indiebound Bestseller
Paul Auster’s magnum opus, 4 3 2 1 presents a sweeping and surprising story of birthright and possibility, of love and of life itself.
“An epic bildungsroman . . . . Original and complex . . . . A monumental assemblage of competing and complementary fictions, a novel that contains multitudes.”—Tom Perrotta, The New York Times Book Review
Nearly two weeks early, on March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson’s life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four identical Fergusons made of the same DNA, four boys who are the same boy, go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Athletic skills and sex lives and friendships and intellectual passions contrast. Each Ferguson falls under the spell of the magnificent Amy Schneiderman, yet each Amy and each Ferguson have a relationship like no other. Meanwhile, readers will take in each Ferguson’s pleasures and ache from each Ferguson’s pains, as the mortal plot of each Ferguson’s life rushes on.
As inventive and dexterously constructed as anything Paul Auster has ever written, yet with a passion for realism and a great tenderness and fierce attachment to history and to life itself that readers have never seen from the author before, 4 3 2 1 is a marvelous and unforgettably affecting tour de force.
“A stunningly ambitious novel, and a pleasure to read. . . . An incredibly moving, true journey.”—NPR
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Almost everything about Auster's new novel is big. The sentences are long and sinuous; the paragraphs are huge, often running more than a page; and the book comes in at nearly 900 pages. In its telling, however, the book is far from epic, though it is satisfyingly rich in detail. It's a bildungsroman spanning protagonist Archie Ferguson's birth in 1947 to a consequential U.S. presidential election in 1974. Some warm opening pages are dedicated to the romance of the parents of Ferguson (as the third-person narrator refers to him throughout), Rose and Stanley. In its depiction of the everyday life of its hero, the book also gives a full history of America during this period through the eyes of Ferguson who, not coincidentally, is roughly the same age as Auster. He roots for the nascent Kennedy administration, sees Martin Luther King's peaceful resistance, and recognizes both the greatness and the iniquity in L.B.J.'s actions as president. These national events are juxtaposed against Ferguson's coming-of-age: he goes to summer camp, has a sad first love with a girl named Anne-Marie, and gets an education via his beloved aunt Mildred. One of the many pleasures of the book is Ferguson's vibrant recounting of his reading experiences, such as Emma Goldman's Living My Life, Voltaire's Candide, and Theodore White's The Making of the President, 1960. Auster adds a significant and immersive entry to a genre that stretches back centuries and includes Augie March and Tristram Shandy.
