Image by Julian Civiero/Millenium Images.

Don DeLillo and Paul Auster have collectively featured in the pages of Granta ten times over a period spanning nearly three decades, including their recent appearences in Horror. Though they are friends, they had not read and discussed their work in public together for over twenty years before taking to the stage this week, at Barnes & Noble, Union Square, New York, for the main event of Granta’s Horror issue.

The below recording includes both Paul Auster’s reading from his piece of memoir ‘Your Birthday Has Come and Gone’, and Don DeLillo’s reading of sections from his story, ‘The Starveling’, followed by their discussion with Granta editor John Freeman, about their work in the issue, ‘impoverished characters’ and living in and writing about New York.

The Granta Podcast Episode 28 by Ted Hodgkinson Granta

Granta 106, the New Fiction Special, includes ‘Invisible’, an extract from Paul Auster’s novel of the same name, recently published by Faber in the UK and Frances Coady in the US. Auster is an internationally acclaimed author of more than twenty books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. He is also a frequent Granta contributor – ‘Invisible’ marks the eighth appearance of his work in the magazine.

Joanna Briscoe lauded Invisible’s ‘intensely felt authenticity’ in the Guardian, calling it ‘a fascinating and highly accomplished’ work. In the New York Times, Clancy Martin wrote that Auster’s prose is ‘contemporary American writing at its best: crisp, elegant, brisk, [with] the illusion of effortlessness that comes only with fierce discipline... [If] part of why you read is the great pleasure of falling in love with a novel, then read Invisible.’

In May, Auster spoke about Invisible with Granta Editor John Freeman. In this exclusive video interview, Auster addresses the emotional intimacy and intertextual exercises of his fiction, the ‘intensity of youth’, the unsettling quality of narrative clarity and his writing process.