New York, New York - Paul Auster, the prolific American novelist whose works included The New York Trilogy, has died of complications from lung cancer, a friend of the novelist told AFP. He was 77.

Auster died on Tuesday evening at his home in Brooklyn surrounded by family, including his wife Siri Hustvedt and daughter Sophie Auster, his friend and fellow author Jacki Lyden said in a statement sent to AFP.

He made his name with noirish, existentialist novels about lonely writers, outsiders and down-and-outers that were a huge hit in Europe particularly.

The author with the soulful, sunken eyes gained cult status in the 1980s and 1990s with his New York Trilogy of metaphysical mysteries and his hip film Smoke, about the lost souls who frequent a Brooklyn tobacco shop.

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Hustved, also an author, announced in March 2023 that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

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 made a living off translations while honing his craft as a writer.

His life was marred by tragedy in later years, with his 10-month-old granddaughter dying after ingesting heroin and his son Daniel, the child's father, dying of an overdose 10 months later.

Lyden called Auster a "writer's writer" who covered "every facet of loss, loneliness, and the joys and sorrows of a life in words".

"He never lost touch with human suffering, and connectedness, and it made him the beloved writer he has become," she said.