Paul Auster (born in 1947) is an American novelist, poet, essayist and translator, the author of many novels, plays, and poems. Winner of numerous literary awards."4 3 2 1" is the writer's first novel in seven years. It was immediately shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2017, and Western critics call it the main work of the author.Oster himself admitted that he wrote it seven days a week for three years.At the heart of the novel is an idea that has always occupied the writer: he has long been thinking about the role of chance in fate, about what life could be like if a different decision had been made, if at a certain moment a person had turned in the other direction.Oster is not called a postmodern classic for nothing: he put not one story, but four, under one cover. At some point, the plot is divided into four major branches, each of which corresponds to one of the possible lives of the main character - Archie Ferguson. And in each of his four lives, he goes through all the stages of growing up: he experiences changes in relationships with family and friends, tries to arrange his personal life, participates in events related to culture, sports and politics of the 1950s and 1960s, on to which the youth of the heroes fell and which became so important to America. Since each of the Fergusons has its own layer of culture, the coverage is as wide as possible.