Saul Bellow was praised for his vision, his ear for
detail, his humor, and the masterful artistry of his prose. Born of
Russian Jewish parents in Lachine, Quebec in 1915, he was raised in
Chicago. He received his Bachelor's degree from Northwestern
University in 1937, with honors in sociology and anthropology, and
did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin. During the Second
World War he served in the Merchant Marines.
His first two novels, Dangling Man (1944)
and The Victim (1947) are penetrating, Kafka-like
psychological studies. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim
Fellowship and spent two years in Paris and traveling in Europe,
where he began his picaresque novel The Adventures of Augie
March, which went on to win the National Book Award for fiction
in 1954. His later books of fiction include Seize the
Day (1956); Henderson the Rain
King (1959); Mosby's Memoirs and Other
Stories (1968); Mr. Sammler's
Planet (1970); Humboldt's Gift (1975),
which won the Pulitzer Prize; The Dean's
December (1982); More Die of
Heartbreak (1987); Theft (1988); The
Bellarosa Connection (1989);The
Actual (1996); Ravelstein (2000); and,
most recently, Collected Stories(2001). Bellow has also
produced a prolific amount of non-fiction, collected in To
Jerusalem and Back, a personal and literary record of his
sojourn in Israel during several months in 1975, and It All
Adds Up, a collection of memoirs and essays.
Bellow's many awards include the International Literary Prize
for Herzog, for which he became the first American to
receive the prize; the Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, the
highest literary distinction awarded by France to non-citizens; the
B'nai B'rith Jewish Heritage Award for "excellence in Jewish
Literature"; and America's Democratic Legacy Award of the
Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the first time this award
has been made to a literary personage. In 1976 Bellow was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature "for the human understanding and
subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his
work."
John Michael Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa, on
February 9, 1940. He studied first at Cape Town and later at the
University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a Ph.D. degree in
literature. In 1972 he returned to South Africa and joined the
faculty of the University of Cape Town. His works of fiction
include Dusklands, Waiting for the Barbarians, which won
South Africa’s highest literary honor, the Central News Agency
Literary Award, and the Life and Times of Michael K., for
which Coetzee was awarded his first Booker Prize in 1983. He has
also published a memoir, Boyhood: Scenes From a Provincial
Life, and several essays collections. He has won many other
literary prizes including the Lannan Award for Fiction, the
Jerusalem Prize and The Irish Times International Fiction
Prize. In 1999 he again won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize for
Disgrace, becoming the first author to win the award twice
in its 31-year history. In 2003, Coetzee was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature.
By the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
“One of the most honest pieces of testimony on the psychology of a
whole generation who have grown up during the Depression and the
war,” –Edmund Wilson, The New Yorker
“In this imaginative journal, set against fresh and vivid scenes in
Chicago, the author has outlined what must seem to many others an
uncannily accurate delineation of themselves.” –The New York
Times
“An extraordinary first novel.” –The Observer
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