The World that is the Book offers an in-depth analysis of Paul Auster's fiction. It explores the rich literary and cultural sources that Auster taps into in order to create compelling stories that investigate the nature of language, the workings of chance, and the individual's complex relations with the world at large. Whereas most Auster criticism has concentrated on readings of individual novels, this book emphasizes the continuity in Auster's writing by discussing throughout the philosophical underpinnings that lead the author to question the boundaries separating the fictional from the factual, and the real from the imagined.