The Artist of the Missing

paul la farge stephen alcorn

Frank, a young artist, arrives in the city hoping to unravel the mystery of his parents' disappearance. He begins working as a washer of robes at a hotel for itinerant judges. There he meets and falls in love with Prudence, a forensic photographer whose pictures reveal the secrets of the dead.

When Prudence disappears, Frank sets out in search of her, a quest that leads him into the shadowy world of a revolutionary salon, then to prison, and finally to discover the city's strange secrets and the secrets of his own heart.

A haunting novel that recalls the early work of Paul Auster and Steven Millhauser, The Artist of the Missing is a stunning debut, both a richly imagined evocation of another world and a piercing examination of the mystery of love, and beautifully illustrated by the acclaimed artist Stephen Alcorn.

A visionary novel about love, loss, imagination, and despair.

Genres literaturenovelsfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 4,1999

Literary awards

california book award,

This edition

Format: 256 pages, Paperback
Published: June 4, 1999 by Farrar, Strauss \u0026 Giroux
ISBN: 9780374525804
ASIN: 0374525803
Language: English

About the author

paul la farge

Paul La Farge was the author of four novels: The Night Ocean (The Penguin Press, 2017); The Artist of the Missing (FSG, 1999), Haussmann, or the Distinction (FSG, 2001), and Luminous Airplanes (FSG, 2011); and a book of imaginary dreams, The Facts of Winter (McSweeney's Books, 2005).

He was the grateful recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Bard Fiction Prize, and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library in 2013-14. He lived in a subterranean ‘annex' in upstate New York, where he was almost certainly up to no good.