Until the publication of his novel The New York Trilogy in 1986, Paul Auster was known primarily as a translator and poet. Auster's fiction, along with his noteworthy memoir The Invention of Solitude, has generated considerable scholarship, and his work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. Auster's ten novels span a wide range of subjects -- including a postmodern detective story (City of Glass), a postapocalyptic narrative (In The Country of Last Things), and a narrative told from the perspective of a dog (Timbuktu) -- yet nearly all of his fiction offers themes of chance, memory, and identity. Often described as postmodern, the literature of Auster examines subjectivity, and the self's relation to fate, language, and displacement.