Celebrated novelist Paul Auster dies aged 77 after lung cancer battle two years ... trends now
Novelist Paul Auster has died aged 77 following a lengthy battle with lung cancer, just two years after the deaths of his son and granddaughter who had died from overdoses.
The iconic writer, and author behind the award-winning novels The New York Trilogy, passed away on Tuesday with his death confirmed by his friend and fellow novelist Jacki Lyden.
Auster had penned an impressive 34 books during the span of his career, with his last - Baumgartner - being released this year.
The American author became widely-recognised for his 'highly stylised, quirkily riddlesome postmodernist fiction in which narrators are rarely other than unreliable and the bedrock of plot is continually shifting,' the novelist Joyce Carol Oates wrote on the late writer in 2010.
But the tragic news of his death comes just two years after tragedy struck his family after his son Daniel Auster, 44, and his 10-month-old granddaughter Ruby died of drug overdoses.
Paul Auster died aged 77 on Tuesday following a battle with lung cancer
Auster was the author behind the award-winning novels The New York Trilogy
Daniel was found dead, surrounded by drug paraphernalia, just nine days after his arrest for the manslaughter of his daughter.
He had been arrested on Easter Sunday in April 2022, following the November 1, 2021, death of Ruby who had died of a fentanyl overdose after Daniel had taken heroin and then taken a nap with the child by his side.
The vivid account allegedly given to the NYPD by Daniel was shared by Assistant District Attorney Tien Tran, said at his arraignment hearing on manslaughter charges.
The infant's mother, Zuzan Smith, told police that their daughter, Ruby, was awake and alert when she left her in Daniel's care and went to work.
A criminal complaint obtained by DailyMail.com at the time stated that Daniel told police that shortly after Smith left their home, he injected heroin and then got into bed for a nap with the child by his side.
When he woke up from his nap, she was 'blue, lifeless and unresponsive', the complaint stated.
It was unclear how the girl ingested the drugs, but Auster confessed that he kept heroin in his bathroom.
The prosecutor said that the girl had enough drugs in her system to 'render an adult unconscious.'
An autopsy conducted by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner a few days after the death found Ruby has died of acute intoxication caused by the combined effects of fentanyl and heroin.
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