For those used to the almost psychedelic complexity of Auster’s novels, Timbuktu will come as something of a shock. It’s short, sweet, and utterly simple: a lovely and moving story of a dog who loses his master. The story is told in omniscient third person, but it takes the dog’s point of view and never wavers from it. There are no subtexts, few literary allusions, and even the idea of a dog capable of serious thought comes across as completely straight and oddly believable. Timbuktu is clean, and suitable for young adult readers. The protagonist is Mr Bones, the dog whose thoughts drive the narrative.

As the book opens, Mr Bones’ master, Willy G Christmas, is dying, and is on a mission to find Mr Bones a new home before that happens. But homeless himself, schizophrenic, and on his last legs, Willy isn’t particularly successful. Mr Bones’ journey as he tries to come to terms with the loss of a master he had come to love — while also looking after his own increasingly desperate welfare — forms the plotline of the book.

Of course there are aspects of Timbuktu which can be read as metaphor. Mr Bones’ struggle to find food and shelter while remaining true to the memory of his owner, provide a poignant reminder of the all too common difficulties of human homelessness. The prejudices that Willy and Mr Bones encounter are those that most people reading the book will recognise in themselves. But Mr Bones is more than metaphoric, and Timbuktu provides the reader with more than simply a case of anthropomorphism. Mr Bones is a character that readers will identify with and like simply for his own dogginess: his integrity and honesty is all too apparent. Mr Bones is unusually intelligent, and his knowledge of English is due in part to Willy’s constant chatter as “a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool logomaniac who scarcely stopped talking from the instant he opened his eyes in the morning until he passed out drunk at night”.