Faber & Faber, (Paul Auster's publishers in the UK), have kindly provided copies of his latest works 'Oracle Night', 'Collected Prose' and 'The Book of Illusions' for the winner of the next Paul Auster competition to coincide with the UK release of 'Oracle Night' on Thursday 5th February 2004.

To win these three books all you have to do is answer ten Paul Auster related questions and submit a piece of creative work. You can earn up to twenty points for your entry, (ten points per section), and the person with the most points will win all three books.

The competition will be judged by myself and past winner Sara Serrao and all entries need to be submitted by Friday 6th February 2004.

Section 1 - Knowledge - earn up to 10 points by answering the following ten questions:

What is Auster's middle name?	Where would you find Mother Sue and Aesop?
In which novel would you find the character Kitty Wu?	Which book does Auster class as 'my favorite novel of all time'?
Which baseball team does Auster support?	Which novel ends with 'I live with that hope'?
Name the first four colours/characters mentioned in 'Ghosts'?	Who was Auster's first wife?
At which venue did Auster recently read all of 'Oracle Night'?	In what year was 'The Music of Chance' first published?

Section 2 - Creative - earn up to 10 points by submitting a piece of creative work detailed below:

All you have to do is submit one of the following options:

Your own portrait of Paul Auster
A drawing of your interpretation of one of Auster's characters, e.g. Master Yehudi, David Zimmer etc
A short essay about your favourite Auster novel
A review of one of his books
A photograph of someone on the train etc reading an Auster novel
Your own design for a book cover for one of his books
A short essay about a personal experience of coincidence in the style of 'I Thought My Father Was God'
A piece of music/poetry inspired by Auster's work

You need to submit your entries to both sections to the following e-mail [email protected] by Friday 6th February 2004. If you need to post your entry then e-mail me at the above address and I will send you a postal address to send it to.

Many thanks to Matthew de Ville at Faber & Faber for making this competition possible.