Paul Auster returns with another brilliant novel about personal, familial, and cultural identity.  Man In The Dark (Picador, $14) focuses on August Brill, a man who fills his life with narrative—classic films, family secrets, and highly-inventive anti-bedtime stories.  Brill creates an America that didn’t experience 9/11 and that has fallen into civil, rather than international, war.  These new “facts” become the backdrop for Brill’s nocturnal brooding, even as they distract him from the nagging events of his night-long pondering.  By day, Brill’s life revolves around his relationship with his granddaughter, and these sections include some of the most insightful writing about film I’ve ever encountered.  Man in the Dark is all things Auster: quizzical, suspenseful, and, above all, incredibly enjoyable.