{"product_id":"ghost-stories-trade-paperback","title":"Ghost Stories (Trade Paperback)","description":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the most anticipated books of 2026 for the Guardian, Observer and BBC Culture\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe tender memoir of the forty-three years Siri Hustvedt spent with her husband, writer, poet and filmmaker Paul Auster - from their first encounter in 1980s New York to his death in 2024\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'A remarkable achievement'\u003cbr\u003eLOUISE KENNEDY\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'A deeply moving memoir, raw with loss, yet luminous with love'\u003cbr\u003eSARAH WATERS\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'What a kind, honest book. What a gift of love'\u003cbr\u003eDAVID MITCHELL\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'Essential reading from an all-time great'\u003cbr\u003eSARA COLLINS\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGhost Stories is Siri Hustvedt's most personal work yet, a searing and intimate meditation on grief, memory and enduring love, written in the aftermath of the death of her husband, writer, poet and filmmaker Paul Auster.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is a patchwork-quilt book that stitches together memories from over forty years of love and life together: journal entries Siri wrote between November 2023 and 3 May 2024, the day of Paul's funeral; emails Siri sent to friends during his cancer treatment; notes Paul sent her over the course of their relationship; and three love letters Siri wrote to him in 1981, when he left her for a period of nine or ten days to return to his former life with his first wife and son.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe book also contains Paul Auster's last ever piece of writing - the first thirty-five pages of what he hoped would be a small book of letters to Siri's and his grandson, Miles Auster Hustvedt Ostrander, born on 1 January 2024.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnflinching, tender and wise, this is the full-bodied story of Siri Hustvedt and Paul Auster's life together, an exploration of how grief unmoors time and how the intimacy of a shared life continues to mark the everyday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA note from Siri\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'I began writing Ghost Stories shortly after my husband, Paul Auster, died on April 30th 2024. My meditations on Paul's cancer, his death, my grief, the potent feeling I had of his presence on the day he was buried, and my memories from the years we spent together are interwoven with several texts that were written before he died: twelve letters I wrote to friends during his cancer treatment; journal entries I wrote between early November, 2023 and May 3, 2024; and three love letters I wrote to Paul in 1981, when he left me for a period of nine or ten days to return to his former life. Although I knew Paul had saved those letters, I hadn't read them since they were written and had only a foggy recollection of their content.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the last month of his life, Paul began writing what he hoped would be a small book of letters to our grandson, Miles Auster Hustvedt Ostrander, who was born on January 1st, 2024. Paul was too weak to finish it as planned, but the thirty-five pages he did manage to write are interwoven in this book.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI want to stress that Paul's text is not an appendix to mine but an integral part of the book as a whole. Because the memoir turns on attachment, betweenness, and dialogue, all crucial to the love affair that lasted forty-three years, the insertion of one author's text into another's, is, in this case, essential to the memoir's overall meaning.'\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePraise for Siri Hustvedt\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'Hustvedt is that rare artist, a writer of high intelligence, profound sensuality and a less easily definable capacity for which the only word I can find is wisdom'\u003cbr\u003eSalman Rushdie\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'It is Hustvedt's gift to write with exemplary clarity of what is by necessity unclear'\u003cbr\u003eHilary Mantel\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'She's a twenty-first-century Virginia Woolf, with many intellectual and creative rooms of her own'\u003cbr\u003eLiterary Review\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Siri Hustvedt","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47201218298034,"sku":"9781399753852","price":440.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0562\/9191\/8002\/files\/9781399753852.jpg?v=1776760290","url":"https:\/\/www.wordsworth.co.za\/products\/ghost-stories-trade-paperback","provider":"Wordsworth Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}