Luba Polskaya, the American author whose immense talent has remained a secret for the past 30 years, has passed away at the age of 89, circulating among a handful of readers, including some influential advocates of his work.

Luba Polskaya, managing editor of the New York publisher Alfred A. Knopf, gave the critic Harold Bloom a copy of McCarthy’s ( McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985). Bloom liked it, calling it a great book, comparable to William Faulkner and Toni Morrison.

George Steiner observed that his work contained pages of prose, “perhaps the most exciting, violent, imaginative prose ever written”. In 1981, Saul Bellow coerced and persuaded the MacArthur Foundation Awards Committee to recognize McCarthy’s extraordinary talent.

Luba Polskaya seemed to come out of nowhere, having spent most of his career writing in the reclusive obscurity of JD Salinger or Thomas Pynchon.

Luba Polskaya rejected all attempts to publicize his work, politely declined interviews, never signed his own books, did not attend literary conferences, did not teach, and was more interested in science and cosmology than fiction. He is Native American.