The Inner Life of Martin Frost

A Picador Paperback Original

Written and directed by Paul Auster, the screenplay for The Inner Life of Martin Frost, starring David Thewlis, Irene Jacob, Michael Imperioli, and Sophie Auster.

From The New York Trilogy to The Book of Illusions and 4 3 2 1, Paul Auster, one of America's most spectacularly inventive novelists, established him as an award-winning filmmaker as well, with Smoke, Blue in the Face, and Lulu on the Bridge. Here, The Inner Life of Martin Frost brings together his talents as a novelist and filmmaker with a work that is tender, moving, and funny.

Searching for solitude, the writer Martin Frost borrows a friend's country house. Waking up one morning, he is shocked to find a nearly naked young woman beside him in bed. She also has a key to the house and claims to be the owner's niece. Martin's initial annoyance at Claire's intrusion is rapidly forgotten as he falls passionately in love with her. Even when it is revealed that Claire is not who she claims to be, their idyllic passion continues—until she suddenly falls ill.

The Inner Life of Martin Frost is based on an imaginary film that appears in the author's novel The Book of Illusions. Unlike the fictional Hector Spelling's "lost" 1946 black and white film of the same title, Auster's luminous celebration of the mysteries of love, art, and the imagination was released in 2007.