Celebrated novelist Paul Auster dies aged 77 after lung cancer battle two years after overdose deaths of his son, 44, and baby granddaughter

Novelist Paul Auster has died aged 77 following a lengthy battle with lung cancer, just two years after the deaths of his son and granddaughter who had died from overdoses.

The iconic writer, and author behind the award-winning novels The New York Trilogy, passed away on Tuesday with his death confirmed by his friend and fellow novelist Jacki Lyden.

Auster had penned 34 books during the span of his career, with his last - Baumgartner - being released this year.

The American author became widely-recognised for his 'highly stylised, quirkily riddlesome postmodernist fiction in which narrators are rarely other than unreliable and the bedrock of plot is continually shifting,' the novelist Joyce Carol Oates wrote on the late writer in 2010.

But the news of his death comes just two years after double tragedy struck his family when his son Daniel Auster, 44, and his 10-month-old granddaughter Ruby died of drug overdoses.

Paul Auster died aged 77 on Tuesday following a battle with lung cancer

Auster was the author behind the award-winning novels The New York Trilogy

Auster and his son Daniel, pictured as a young boy in a photo posted to his Instagram before he died, entitled 'Me and pops'

Auster grew up in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Jewish Polish immigrants.

He moved to New York to attend Columbia University and after graduating spent four years in France, where he lived from translations while honing his craft as a writer.

He went through particularly dark times in the 1970s when he married, then four years later divorced, US short story writer Lydia Davis, with whom he had Daniel.

'I had run into a wall with my work. I was blocked and miserable, my marriage was falling apart, I had no money. I was finished,' he told The New York Times in 1992.

The turning point came with the sudden death of his father, which spurred Auster to write 'The Invention of Solitude', a haunting reflection on father-son relationships, a recurring theme in Auster's work.

Published in 1982 it was a critical success and set Auster free with his writing.

The same year he married Hustvedt, forming one of New York's starriest intellectual couples.

Auster and Hustvedt shared a daughter together, Sophie, who went on to become a singer and actor. 

The author was better known in Europe than in his native United States: 'Merely a bestselling author in these parts,' read a 2007 New York magazine article.

'Auster is a rock star in Paris.' 

In 2006, he was awarded Spain's Prince of Asturias prize for literature, and in 1993 he was given the Prix Médicis Étranger for Leviathan.

Auster's son Daniel was found dead at a subway station, surrounded by drug paraphernalia, just four days after his April 16, 2022, arrest for the manslaughter of his daughter.

He had been arrested following the November 1, 2021, death of little Ruby who had succumbed to a fentanyl overdose after Daniel had taken heroin and then taken a nap with the child by his side.

He was released on bond on April 17 by Brooklyn Judge John Hecht, who demanded a $100,000 cash bail or $250,000 bond. It's unclear who met those bond requirements.

On April 20  he overdosed on the subway platform of the northbound G train at the Washington Avenue/Clinton Street stop in New York City.

The vivid account of Ruby's death, allegedly given to the NYPD by Daniel just days earlier was shared by Assistant District Attorney Tien Tran at his arraignment hearing on manslaughter charges.

The infant's mother, Zuzan Smith, told police that their daughter, Ruby, was awake and alert when she left her in Daniel's care and went to work.

The tragic news of Auster's death comes just two years after tragedy struck his family after his son Daniel Auster, 44, and his 10-month-old granddaughter Ruby died of drug overdoses

Daniel had been arrested on Easter Sunday in April 2022, following the November 1, 2021, death of Ruby who had died of a fentanyl overdose after Daniel had taken heroin and then taken a nap with the child by his side

Daniel's wife Zuzan told police that Ruby was awake and alert when she left her in Daniel's care and went to work, in November 2021

A criminal complaint obtained by DailyMail.com at the time stated that Daniel told police that shortly after Smith left their home, he injected heroin and then got into bed for a nap with the child by his side.

When he woke up from his nap, she was 'blue, lifeless and unresponsive', the complaint stated.

It was unclear how the girl ingested the drugs, but Auster confessed that he kept heroin in his bathroom. 

The prosecutor said that the girl had enough drugs in her system to 'render an adult unconscious.'

An autopsy conducted by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner a few days after the death found Ruby has died of acute intoxication caused by the combined effects of fentanyl and heroin. 

'On Wednesday, April 20, 2022 at 0948hrs at Washington Avenue/Clinton Street subway station, police officers observed an unconscious 44-year-old male on the northbound G train platform, administered CPR along with FDNY and the individual was removed by EMS to Brooklyn Hospital in stable condition but was later pronounced deceased on Tuesday, April 26, 2022,' an NYPD spokesman said at the time.

In Auster's 1995 film about the lives of people who frequented a Brooklyn tobacco shop, Smoke - which starred Harvey Keitel and William Hurt - Daniel played the role of a book thief.

Daniel and his father appeared to be estranged, but Auster wrote Daniel into his work.

Daniel Auster is pictured in a photo with his father Paul, in a shot from his teenage years

Auster was known for writing his son into his works. In his 2004 novel, Oracle Night, the book is narrated by a writer called Trause whose son is a drug addict who terrorizes his stepmother

Auster (pictured center) with second wife Siri Hustvedt (left) and their daughter Sophie (right)

Hustvedt, left, who is also a writer, never spoke about her stepson, Daniel. She is pictured alongside husband Auster in 2016

In his 2004 novel, Oracle Night, the book is narrated by a writer called Trause whose son is a drug addict who terrorizes his stepmother.

During a 2006 Guardian interview, Paul Auster's second wife Siri Hustvedt who is also a writer, declined to speak about her stepson.

'Yes. You know, I'm not going to talk about any of that, no. No,' she said, her eyes reportedly beginning to water.

'You know, I am married to a writer, and this - writing - is an odd enterprise.

'It's something we both support very strongly.

'I've always been behind Paul, and he's always been behind me.

'I have a very strong family.'