A “patchwork-quilt memoir” by Siri Hustvedt about the death of her husband, novelist Paul Auster, is coming in 2026.
Simon & Schuster will publish Hustvedt’s Ghost Stories next spring, the press announced in a news release. It calls the book “a searing memoir of love and grief.”
Hustvedt, a Minnesota native, married Auster, the author of novels including City of Glass, Moon Palace, and Sunset Park, in 1982. She made her literary debut the same year with the poetry collection Reading to You, and she published her first novel, The Blindfold, a decade later. Her other books include the novels The Enchantment of Lily Dahl and The Blazing World and the nonfiction books Yonder and A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women.
Auster died last year at 77. In an Instagram post announcing his death, Hustvedt wrote, “His stoic courage and humor until the end of his life stand as an example for me. He said several times that he would like to die telling a joke. I told him that was unlikely, and he smiled.”
Ghost Stories, Simon & Schuster says, “stitches together emails sent by Siri to update friends on Paul’s health, letters drafted by Paul, correspondence from the early days of their romance, and memories recounted by Hustvedt with her signature lyricism. The book is both an elegy and a reckoning—a chronicle of personal loss that also bears witness to the cascading sorrows of recent years, including the tragic deaths of Hustvedt’s stepson and infant granddaughter.”
In a statement, Hustvedt said, “My meditations on Paul’s cancer, his death, my grief, the potent feeling I had of his presence on the day he was buried, and my memories from the years we spent together are interwoven with several texts that were written before he died: twelve letters I wrote to friends during his cancer treatment; journal entries I wrote between early November, 2023 and May 3, 2024; and three love letters I wrote to Paul in 1981, when he left me for a period of nine or ten days to return to his former life.”
Ghost Stories is slated for publication on May 5, 2026.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
