Oracle Night

Oracle Night
	First edition (US)
Author	Paul Auster
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Henry Holt (US); Faber & Faber (UK)
Publication date	2003
Media type	Print (hardback)
Pages	256 pp
ISBN	0-8050-7320-5
OCLC	57005889

Oracle Night is a 2003 novel by American author Paul Auster.

The novel is about a writer named Sidney Orr (a short, Americanized version of the Polish surname Orlovsky), who, after making a miraculous recovery from near fatal illness, buys a new notebook and starts writing a story about a man who completely changed his life when he realised how much his existence was ruled by randomness.

The base premises for the book is this, Sidney Orr trying to come back to his life and begin writing again, but a lot of things happen in his life at the same time, and the reader gets introduced not only to Sidney's work and personal life, but also in some extent to the life of the person in his work-in-progress novel. Before the end of this period in Sidney's life, events will take place that are truly life-altering, and Sidney will, much like the fictional character he writes of, have to deal with issues and questions he has previously (perhaps unconsciously) been avoiding for several years.

Biographical[edit]

The main character, Sidney Orr, is in many ways quite similar to Paul Auster. They are both residents of Brooklyn, middle-aged, married, and, of course, writers. Some similarities between Auster and a supporting character in Oracle Night—John Trause—are also apparent. Trause, an anagram of Auster, also lived in Paris for a period of his life.

External links[edit]

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v t e Works by Paul Auster
Fiction	Squeeze Play (1982) The New York Trilogy (1987) In the Country of Last Things (1987) Moon Palace (1989) The Music of Chance (1990) Leviathan (1992) Mr. Vertigo (1994) Timbuktu (1999) The Book of Illusions (2002) Oracle Night (2003) The Brooklyn Follies (2005) Travels in the Scriptorium (2006) Man in the Dark (2008) Invisible (2009) Sunset Park (2010) 4 3 2 1 (2017)
Screenplays	The Music of Chance (1993) Smoke (1995) Blue in the Face (1995) Lulu on the Bridge (1998) The Inner Life of Martin Frost (2007)
Memoir	The Invention of Solitude (1982) Hand to Mouth (1997) The Story of My Typewriter (2002) Winter Journal (2012) Report from the Interior (2013)
Other	A Tomb for Anatole (1983) The Red Notebook (1995) Here and Now (2013) A Life in Words (2017) Talking to Strangers (2019) Burning Boy (2021) Bloodbath Nation (2023)