Paul Auster’s greatest, most heartbreaking and satisfying novel―a sweeping and surprising story of birthright and possibility, of love and of life itself: a masterpiece. Nearly two weeks early, on March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson’s life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four identical Fergusons made of the same DNA, four boys who are the same boy, go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Athletic skills and sex lives and friendships and intellectual passions contrast. Each Ferguson falls under the spell of the magnificent Amy Schneiderman, yet each Amy and each Ferguson have a relationship like no other. Meanwhile, readers will take in each Ferguson’s pleasures and ache from each Ferguson’s pains, as the mortal plot of each Ferguson’s life rushes on. As inventive and dexterously constructed as anything Paul Auster has ever written, yet with a passion for realism and a great tenderness and fierce attachment to history and to life itself that readers have never seen from Auster before. 4 3 2 1 is a marvelous and unforgettably affecting tour de force.

一位先生在他经常流连的私人俱乐部里，得到一盒别人寄给他朋友的巧克力，他带回家之后，他的太太吃了巧克力却被毒死了(包着酒的巧克力里被巧妙的换了毒药)。这是谁下的手？为了什么？目标是要谋杀那位收到包裹的朋友，或者是死者的先生，还是死者她本人？受害人之死是意外的牵连，还是蓄意的规画？又如何可能规画？警方侦办这个奇特的案件，立刻陷入了胶着，毫无线索与头绪，不得不求助于一个由各种爱好推理艺术人士组成的业余社团「犯罪圈」(Crime Circle)来帮助查案，不料其中六位推理小说迷竟分别找出六个完美的推理结论来；六个不同结论都能有效解释案情，也就是都能合逻辑地「破案」，但事实真相只能有一个，哪一个推理才是真相？或者都不是，事实另有面貌？