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?

On March 3, 1947 Archibald Isaac Ferguson is born. From that single beginning, his life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four boys who are the same boy, will go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Fergusons story rushes on across twentieth-century America. A sweeping story of birthright and possibility, of love and the fullness of life itself.