About the Author

Saul Bellow was born in 1915 to Russian emigre parents. As a young child in Chicago, Bellow was raised on books - the Old Testament, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Chekhov - and learned Hebrew and Yiddish. He set his heart on becoming a writer after reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, contrary to his mother's hopes that he would become a rabbi or a concert violinist. He was educated at the University of Chicago and North-Western University, graduating in Anthropology and Sociology; he then went on to work for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Bellow published his first novel, The Dangling Man, in 1944; this was followed, in 1947, by The Victim. In 1948 a Guggenheim Fellowship enabled Bellow to travel to Paris, where he wrote The Adventures of Augie March, published in 1953. Henderson The Rain King (1959) brought Bellow worldwide fame, and in 1964, his best-known novel, Herzog, was published and immediately lauded as a masterpiece, 'a well-nigh faultless novel' (New Yorker).

Saul Bellow's dazzling career as a novelist was celebrated during his lifetime with an unprecedented array of literary prizes and awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, three National Book Awards, and the Gold Medal for the Novel. In 1976 he was awarded a Nobel Prize 'for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work'.

Bellow's death in 2005 was met with tribute from writers and critics around the world, including James Wood, who praised 'the beauty of this writing, its music, its high lyricism, its firm but luxurious pleasure in language itself'.

Reviews

"A mature distillation of Mr. Bellow's work . . . a gem."
-"The New York Times"

" The work of a great master still locked in unequal combat with Eros and Time."
-"The New York Times Book Review"

" [A] wonderful book . . . fully worthy of a place in its author's vastly esteemed oeuvre."
-"Chicago Tribune"

"A mature distillation of Mr. Bellow''s work . . . a gem."
-"The New York Times"

" The work of a great master still locked in unequal combat with Eros and Time."
-"The New York Times Book Review"

" [A] wonderful book . . . fully worthy of a place in its author''s vastly esteemed oeuvre."
-"Chicago Tribune"

Harry Trellman, the protagonist of Bellow's latest offering since the trio of short fiction, Something To Remember Me By (Dutton, 1991), is an orphan of sorts, a spiritual self-exile who imagined he could "effect a transfer to another civilization"; he made his fortune in the Far East before returning to Chicago to ease his emotional longing, specifically for the woman who has figured in his thoughts since age 15. Harry, as a remote observer of human nature, will put readers in mind of numerous of Bellow's antiheroes, such as Moses Herzog (Herzog, 1964) and Charlie Citrine (Humboldt's Gift, 1975). Harry's vehicle for immersion in the actual is the ancient billionaire Siggy Adletsky and other "notables" of Chicago society bent on a series of coming-clean schemes that Bellow concocts so ingeniously. In effect, this charming, pared-down tale is a study of the master's method, and despite his determined obfuscation, it is an achingly simple cry from the heart that reads like a parting love letter. Essential for all collections.‘Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"