160,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock πŸ‡³πŸ‡Ώ 

Happy Sunday! Auckland Store open until 5pm today πŸ“š

Baumgartner

A tender masterpiece of love, memory and loss from one of the world’s great writers.
3.73 goodreads logo

Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.

Check link for latest rating.
( 16,092 ratings, 2,002 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Baumgartner by Paul Auster is a contemplative exploration of the quiet yet profound moments in an elderly artist's life following the death of his wife. As Baumgartner reflects on his past, encounters with enigmatic strangers and the unpredictability of life lead to revelations about love, memory, and existence. In this introspective narrative, Auster delves into the complexities of human connection and the enduring impact of one's personal journey.
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$2600
Elsewhere:
$2799
AVAILABLE WITH SUPPLIER Ships from our Auckland warehouse within 4-6 weeks

Found a better price? Request a price match

Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book may appeal to you if you enjoy deep explorations of memory, identity, and the passage of time, set against the richly detailed backdrop of a transformative journey. Paul Auster's storytelling crafts an intricate portrait of a protagonist grappling with personal loss and the complex intersection of past and present. It is an engaging read for those who appreciate a blend of introspective narrative and vivid prose.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

A late masterpiece of love, memory and grief by Paul Auster, 'one of the great American prose stylists of our time'.

A tender final masterpiece of love, memory and loss from one of the world's great writers.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Baumgartner's life has been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna. But now Anna is gone, and Baumgartner is embarking on his seventies whilst trying to live with her absence.

Rich with compassion, wit and Auster's keen eye for beauty in the smallest, most transient episodes of ordinary life, Baumgartner is a tender late masterpiece of the ache of memory. It asks: why do we find such meaning in certain moments, and forget others?

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780571384945

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 07 November 2023

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Faber & Faber

Edition: Export - Airside ed

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 14.0mm

Width: 135.0mm

Height: 216.0mm

Weight: 220g

Pages: 208

About the Author

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Man in the Dark, The Brooklyn Follies, The Book of Illusions, and The Music of Chance among other works. In 2006 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His previous novel, 4 3 2 1 was shortlisted for the Booker prize. He lives in Brooklyn.

Also by Paul Auster

View all
  • Man in the Dark
    I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle through another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness. So begins Paul Auster's brilliant, devastating novel about the many realities we inhabit as wars flame all around us. Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is staying in his daughter's house in Vermont, recovering...
    Paperback
    $2600
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Invention of Solitude
    β€œOne day there is life . . . and then, suddenly, it happens there is death.” So begins Paul Auster's moving and personal meditation on fatherhood. The first section, Portrait of an Invisible Man, reveals Auster's memories and feelings after the death of his father. In The Book of Memory, the perspective shifts to Auster's role as a father. The...
    Paperback
    $2600
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Book of Illusions
    One man's obsession with the mysterious life of a silent film star takes him on a journey into a shadow-world of lies, illusions, and unexpected love. After losing his wife and young sons in a plane crash, Vermont professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours mired in grief. Then, watching television one night, he stumbles upon a lost film by...
    Paperback
    $2600
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Bloodbath Nation
    Bloodbath Nation is about the epidemic that is tearing apart the fabric of American society. An epidemic causedβ€”not by Covidβ€”but by guns. Among its victims are men, women, teenagers, children, and even babies. The massacres have taken place in churches, schools, movie theatres, and at rock concerts. Auster establishes how America's love affair with guns goes all the way back...
    Hardback
    $5000
    Elsewhere:
    $5500
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Here and Now
    Although Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee had been reading each other's books for years, the two writers did not meet until February 2008. Not long after, Auster received a letter from Coetzee, suggesting they begin exchanging letters on a regular basis and, 'God willing, strike sparks off each other'. Here and Now is the result of that proposal: an...
    Paperback
    $4300
    Elsewhere:
    $4699
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Leviathan
    Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin. The explosion that detonates the narrative of Paul Auster's remarkable novel also ends the life of its hero, Benjamin Sachs, and brings two FBI agents to the home of one of Sachs's oldest friends, the writer Peter Aaron. What follows is Aaron's story,...
    Paperback
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Oracle Night
    Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness, novelist Sidney Orr enters a stationery shop in Brooklyn and buys a blue notebook. It is September 18, 1982, and for the next nine days, Orr will live under the spell of this blank book, trapped inside a world of eerie premonitions and bewildering events that threaten to destroy his marriage...
    Paperback
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Moon Palace
    Moon Palace is the story of Marco Stanley Fogg – a novel that spans three generations, from the early years of this century to the first lunar landings, and that moves from the canyons of Manhattan to the cruelly beautiful landscape of the American West.
    Paperback
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Burning Boy
    'Exhilarating.' Joyce Carol Oates, Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year 'Sharp-eyed and revealing.' The New Yorker 'Brilliant . . . Remarkable.' New York Journal of Books Best known as the author of The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane produced an avalanche of sublime literature before he succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of twenty-eight. Yet his short life...
    Paperback
    $3999
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • 4 3 2 1
    On March 3rd, 1947, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous paths. Four Fergusons will go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Loves and friendships and passions contrast. Each version of Ferguson's story rushes across the fractured terrain...
    Paperback
    $3299
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • City of Glass
    When reclusive crime writer Daniel Quinn receives a mysterious call seeking a private detective in the middle of the night, he quickly and unwittingly becomes the protagonist in a thriller of his own. As the familiar territory of the noir detective genre gives way to something altogether more disturbing, Quinn becomes consumed by his mission, and begins to lose his...
    Paperback
    $2499
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Brooklyn Follies
    I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn, and so the next morning I travelled down there from Westchester to scope out the terrain. So begins Paul Auster's remarkable novel, The Brooklyn Follies. Set against the backdrop of the contested US election of 2000, it tells the story of Nathan and Tom, an uncle and nephew...
    Paperback
    $2600
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks

More from General Fiction

View all
  • On Sale
    17% off
    Yesteryear
    A BOLD AND BITING SATIRE. WILL HAVE YOU GASPING TO THE FINAL PAGE β€” Nita Prose WICKEDLY FUNNY, BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN AND FRIGHTENINGLY PERCEPTIVE β€” Abigail Dean INVENTIVE, ADDICTIVE, A WILD RIDE β€” Ashley Audrain SHOT THROUGH WITH HUMOUR AND LACED WITH DARKNESS β€” Clare Mackintosh The Stepford Wives meets The Handmaid's Tale β€” Hannah Deitch My name was Natalie Heller...
    Paperback
    $2500
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    (3)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • On Sale
    14% off
    Theo of Golden
    THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING PHENOMENON'For anything to be truly good, there must be love in it. Nothing is what it's supposed to be if love is not at the core.' One morning, a stranger arrives in the town of Golden. No one knows who he is or where he came from…His name is Theo and he's arrived there by chance –...
    Paperback
    $2500
    Elsewhere:
    $3499
    (6)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • On Sale
    17% off
    The Wedding People
    'BEST READ OF THE YEAR SO FAR' THE TIMES 'BOOKS AS FUN AS THIS ONE ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN' GUARDIAN Phoebe Stone arrives at a grand beachside hotel in Rhode Island wearing her best dress and least comfortable shoes. Immediately she is mistaken for one of the wedding people β€” but she's actually the only guest at the Cornwall...
    Paperback
    $2000
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    (3)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • New Release
    A Court of Splintered Harmony
    Romance, danger, and intrigue await you in the breathtaking sixth book in the #1 bestselling Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) series.What was broken will be remade.Deep in the heart of the continent, Koschei the Deathless is stirring. Though he's been bound to a mountain lake for millennia, the insidious threat of his return now spreads across the Fae territories,...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • New Release
    Threshing Day
    The next book in the blockbuster Empyrean series, Threshing DayΒ contains thirteen stories starring your favorite characters and their dragons. The deluxe first edition includes sixteen beautiful original full-color illustrations by artist Joe Requeza.Β  Β  Rebecca Yarros is the #1 New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over twenty novels, including Fourth Wing and In the...
    Hardback
    $6999
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • A Court of Thorns and Roses Paperback Box Set (5 books)
    All five of the Court of Thorns and Roses paperbacks packaged together in a gorgeous box set. "Passionate, violent, sexy and daring." β€”USA TODAY on A Court of Thorns and Roses Feyre is a huntress. The skin of a wolf would bring enough gold to feed her sisters for a month. But the life of a magical creature comes at...
    Set
    $9999
    Elsewhere:
    $12495
    (4)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • Throne of Glass Box Set (Paperback)
    Enter the realm. Unleash the darkness. Live the legend. Discover the worldwide phenomenon of the #1 New York Times-bestselling Throne of Glass series in this gorgeous 8-book box set! In a land without magic, an assassin is summoned to the castle. She has no love for the vicious king who rules from his throne of glass, but she has not...
    Set
    $12400
    Elsewhere:
    $15500
    (6)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • Assassin’s Apprentice
    Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb marks the beginning of an extraordinary adventure in the rich and immersive world of the Six Duchies. Set against the backdrop of a kingdom teetering on the brink of civil war, this gripping tale introduces readers to FitzChivalry Farseer, a royal bastard whose existence threatens the stability of the crown. When the crown prince's secret...
    Paperback
    $1900
    Elsewhere:
    $2299
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • New Release
    Chain Reaction
    Jack Reacher, \"the coolest continuing series character\" (Stephen King), returns in a brand new, pulse-pounding read from Lee and Andrew Child. The world’s bestselling hero is back in a brand new, high-octane adventure! β€˜She knew that finding Reacher would not be easy . . .’ Washington DC. General Susan Turner needs help from the only guy she knows will get...
    Paperback
    $2999
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (3)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • The Things We Never Say
    Internationally bestselling and prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout's new novel tells the story of a chance incident in a man's lifeβ€”a poignant meditation on loneliness, friendship, and free will in a capsizing world. Artie Dam is a man with a secret. He spends his days teaching history to high schoolers, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a...
    Hardback
    $3200
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (6)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • A Court of Wings and Ruin
    The third instalment of the GLOBAL PHENOMENON, romantic fantasy epic and TikTok sensation, ACOTAR. From multi-million and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas. In A Court of Wings and Ruin, the gripping third book of the ACOTAR series, Feyre Archeron faces the ultimate battle for her world. Having returned to the Spring Court, she is determined to gather...
    Paperback
    $2100
    Elsewhere:
    $2299
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow
  • A Court of Mist and Fury
    A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas continues Feyre Archeron's epic journey in the world of the High Fae. Having survived the brutal trials under the Mountain, Feyre returns to the Spring Court. Though she now possesses the immortal powers of the High Fae, the traumatic experiences have left scars on her human heart. Haunted by the...
    Paperback
    $2100
    Elsewhere:
    $2299
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships tomorrow

Why buy from us?

Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!

Service & Delivery

Service & Delivery

Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 160,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.

Auckland Bookstore

Auckland Bookstore

We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.

Our Gifting Service

Our Gifting Service

Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.

General Fiction lists from the team

Explore our curated lists from our heroes to find your next read!