A major re-assessment of the genius of Stephen Crane - best known for The Red Badge of Courage. 'Exhilarating.' Joyce Carol Oates, Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year 'Sharp-eyed and revealing.' The New Yorker 'Brilliant . Remarkable.' New York Journal of Books Best known as the author of The Red Badge of Courage , Stephen Crane produced an avalanche of sublime literature before he succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of twenty-eight. Yet his short life was an eventful one: from crushing poverty as a newcomer to Manhattan and his near-drowning in a shipwreck, to his stint as a war correspondent in Cuba and international fame at twenty-five, to his final years in England and friendships with Joseph Conrad and Henry James. In Burning Boy , celebrated novelist Paul Auster delves deeply into the story of Crane's tumultuous and dramatic life.