Ghost Stories by Siri Hustvedt

‘A deeply moving memoir, raw with loss, yet luminous with love’ SARAH WATERS

‘What a kind, honest book. What a gift of love’ DAVID MITCHELL

‘Essential reading from an all-time great’ SARA COLLINS

Ghost Stories is Siri Hustvedt’s most personal work yet, a searing and intimate meditation on grief, memory, and enduring love, written in the aftermath of the death of her husband, writer, poet and filmmaker Paul Auster.

It is a patchwork-quilt book that stitches together memories from over forty years of love and life together: journal entries Siri wrote between early November 2023, when Paul first became ill, and 3 May 2024, the day of his funeral; e-mails Siri sent to friends during Paul’s cancer treatment; notes Paul sent her over the course of their relationship; and three love letters Siri wrote to him in 1981, when he left her for a period of nine or ten days to return to his former life with his first wife and son.

The book also contains Paul Auster’s last ever piece of writing – the first thirty-five pages of what he hoped would be a small book of letters to Siri’s and his grandson, Miles Auster Hustvedt Ostrander, born on 1st January 2024.

Unflinching, tender and wise, this is the full-bodied story of Siri Hustvedt and Paul Auster’s life together, an exploration of how grief unmoors time and how the intimacy of a shared life continues to mark the everyday.

‘She’s a twenty-first-century Virginia Woolf’ LITERARY REVIEW

‘It is Hustvedt’s gift to write with exemplary clarity of what is by necessity unclear’ HILARY MANTEL, GUARDIAN

Ghost Stories is Siri Hustvedt’s tender memoir of the forty-three years she spent with her husband, writer, poet and filmmaker Paul Auster: from their first encounter in 1980s New York, to his death in 2024.
Featuring Paul Auster’s last ever piece of writing.

About the Author: Siri Hustvedt is the author of seven novels, five collections of essays, a poetry collection and a memoir. Her books have been listed for major prizes, including the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize and the PEN America Literary Award. She holds a PhD from Columbia University and has been awarded honorary PhDs from Johannes Gutenberg University, Stendhal University and the University of Oslo. She is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and has written on art for the New York Times and the Daily Telegraph. Born in Minnesota, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

05 May 2026
 

Ghost Stories: A Memoir by Siri Hustvedt ISBN 9781399753852