The American writer Paul Auster is suffering from cancer. This was announced by his wife, to whom he has been linked since 1981. Auster, 76, is being treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. His wife and fellow writer Siri Hustvedt posted the news on Instagram: "My husband was diagnosed with cancer in December," she wrote. "I lived in a place I called Cancerland," "Many people have crossed its boundaries because they are or have been sick or love someone, a parent, a child, a spouse or a friend who has or has had cancer," he wrote, "Cancer is different for each person. Some people survive, others die. Everyone knows this, yet living close to that truth changes everyday reality."

The writer fell ill while he was still grieving the death of his son Daniel at the age of 44 from an overdose immediately after that of his granddaughter Ruby for whom Daniel himself was accused of manslaughter, since large quantities of drugs had been found in the body of the child.

Auster has written more than 30 books that have been translated into more than 40 languages. He rose to fame in 1982 with "The Invention of Solitude," a restless memoir of his father. Then "The New York Trilogy" (City of Glass", 1985; "Ghosts", 1986; "The Closed Room", 1987), a noir version of the detective genre. Hustvedt did not specify what type of cancer her husband has or his prognosis.