New York Trilogy books in order

Reading order

The New York Trilogy is Paul Auster’s best-known work, three novellas published between 1985 and 1986 that use the conventions of detective fiction to explore identity, language, and the act of writing itself. The books are connected by theme and atmosphere rather than shared characters or a continuous plot.

City of Glass (1985) follows Daniel Quinn, a mystery writer who answers a phone call meant for someone named “Paul Auster” and takes on a case that pulls him into an obsessive surveillance of a man walking the streets of Manhattan. Ghosts (1986) reduces the detective story to its barest elements: a man named Blue is hired by White to watch a man named Black. The Locked Room (1986) is the most personal of the three, in which the narrator’s childhood friend Fanshawe disappears, leaving behind a wife, a newborn child, and a stack of unpublished manuscripts. Together, the three novellas form one of the most distinctive works of postmodern American fiction.