New York (EFE).- The American writer Paul Auster is receiving treatment for cancer that he was diagnosed with last December, his wife, also the author Siri Hustvedt, revealed this Saturday in a message on his Instagram account.
In the text, Hustvedt expresses her love for her husband, whom she married in 1982, and explains in a literary style that both move in a space called “Cancerland”, whose borders are crossed by those who suffer from the disease or love someone who suffers from it
Auster, 76, felt ill a few months before the cancer diagnosis – of which he does not specify the type or stage – and is receiving treatment at the Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York, the city in which they reside.
“Some people survive it and some people die. This is something that everyone knows, and even so, living close to that truth changes the reality of each day ”, reflects the 68-year-old novelist, who describes her experience as an “adventure on closeness and separation ”.
“You have to be close enough to feel the nerve-wracking treatments as your own and far enough away to offer genuine help. Too much empathy can render a person useless! This tightrope is not always easy to walk, of course, but it is the real labor of love,” she maintains.
Difficult times for Auster and his family
Auster, who this year published “Bloodbath Nation”, an essay on the crisis of gun violence in the US, went through a difficult 2022 on a personal level after the overdose death of his 44-year-old son Daniel, who he was immersed in a legal case for the death of his baby months before.
Ruby, daughter of Daniel and granddaughter of the writer, died at the age of 10 months in 2021 from exposure to heroin and fentanyl, and the father had been charged with negligent homicide and released on bail three days before he was found unconscious in the subway, from which he did not recover.
The author of “The New York trilogy”, “Brooklyn Follies” and “4 3 2 1”, among others, and winner of the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature in 2006, has been dreaming of being a candidate for the Nobel Prize for years and forms a one of the most recognized couples in literature with Hustvedt, awarded the Princess of Asturias for Literature in 2019.