Publisher's Synopsis
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE
A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
One man, four lives. It is March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, when Archibald Isaac Ferguson-sole child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson-is born into the world. From that single beginning, Archibald Isaac Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four Fergusons, made of the same genetic material; four boys who are the same boy will go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives that see them transform into four very different men. Family fortunes diverge. Loves, friendships, and intellectual passions contrast. In an elaborate dance of inner worlds enfolded within the outer forces of history, the rotating narrative spins an intimate plot of each Ferguson's story, as they rush across the tumultuous and fractured terrain of mid-twentieth century America; as a boy grows up again and again and again.
An endeavor of ambition and ingenuity, 4 3 2 1 is a story of infinite possibility, of birthright, of love won and lost, and of the fullness to which a life can be lived. This is Auster's pièce de résistance.
