BAUMGARTNER
by Paul Auster
(Faber, $36.99)
“Sy is so lonely he has fallen in love with the UPS courier and has taken to ordering books he doesn’t want.
Three-quarters of the way through Paul Auster’s new novel, his protagonist, Sy Baumgartner, pushes aside the book he’s been working on, and starts writing an account of a trip he took to Ukraine in 2017. The story is calledand it involves Baumgartner travelling into “the bloodlands of Eastern Europe, the central horror-zone of 20th-century slaughter”.
