Paul Auster & Siri Hustvedt

Paul Auster, known for numerous novels, films and screenplays (including Smoke), talks about his new novel Orakelnacht. The thirty-four-year-old writer Sydney Orr is recovering from a near-fatal illness when he walks into a stationery shop in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. He buys a blue notebook. It is 18 September 1982. For nine days, his life will be dominated by the strange influence of this empty notebook; he becomes trapped in a web of eerie premonitions and confusing events.

Siri Hustvedt speaks about her most recent novel Wat me lief was. Bill and Leo are close friends. They share a passion for art and literature, live in the same apartment building in New York, are fond of each other’s wives, and have sons born around the same time. A tragic accident suddenly takes the life of Leo’s eleven-year-old son. Both families try to recover from the shock, but nothing is the same anymore.