Mr Vertigo begins in 1920s America when an orphaned street kid, Walter Rawley, is taken in by a mysterious master who claims he can teach him to levitate. 

Walter’s apprenticeship is brutal, absurd, and transformative. The novel moves through vaudeville circuits, gangsters, dust-bowl landscapes, race politics, and the long arc of twentieth-century America. Levitation becomes both literal trick and metaphor — for ambition, reinvention, escape.

This is Auster outside the tight metaphysical puzzles of The New York Trilogy. It’s looser, warmer, more openly narrative. Still philosophical, but grounded in character and momentum.

First edition hardback, it's been well loved, but still in good condition.