Brilliant brothers Langley and Homer Collyer are born into bourgeois New York comfort in settled times, their home a fin-de-siecle mansion on upper Fifth Avenue, their future rosy. But before he is out of his teens Homer begins to lose his sight, Langley returns from the War in Europe with his lungs seared by gas, and when the death of their parents in the influenza epidemic of 1918 leaves the brothers orphaned, they seem perilously ill-equipped to deal with the new era. Around Central Park carriages give way to motor cars, Prohibition to free love, but Homer and Langley adapt: their townhouse fills and empties and fills again, with servants, lodgers, tea-dancers and gangsters. They are mocked and spied on, embraced by hippies and besieged by bailiffs, but as the world turns ever more incomprehensible Homer and Langley hold fast to their principles of self-reliance, courage, kindness and love, and they endure.

E.L.多剋托羅（1931— ），當代美國著名作傢，生於紐約猶太人傢庭，在哥倫比亞大學攻讀戲劇碩士學位時參軍。退伍後相繼擔任哥倫比亞電影公司審讀員、新美國文庫齣版社編輯、日晷齣版社總編輯，一九六九年起專事寫作，並在美國多所大學執教。

多剋托羅自一九六一年發錶小說《歡迎來到艱難時代》至今筆耕不輟。主要作品還包括《但以理之書》、《雷格泰姆音樂》、《盧恩湖》、《詩人的生活》、《世界博覽會》、《比利•巴思蓋特》、《大進軍》等。作品已經被翻譯成三十多種文字。《紐約兄弟》是其最新一部長篇小說。

多剋托羅曾獲得美國國傢圖書奬，分彆兩度獲得國傢書評人協會小說奬、美國筆會/福剋納小說奬，伊迪絲•沃頓小說奬，美國藝術與人文學院威廉•迪恩•豪斯奬，以及由美國總統頒發的國傢人文奬章。

多剋托羅現居於紐約，擔任紐約大學英美文學講席教授。