Is Moses Herzog losing his mind? His formidable wife Madeleine has left him for his best friend and he is left alone with his whirling thoughts, yet he still sees himself as a survivor, raging against private disasters and those of the modern age.
Saul Bellow was born in 1915. He 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).
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'.
His 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'.
The character of Herzog is Bellow's grandest creation, and his mind
is as rich as the mind of any character in American literature
*Philip Roth*
Spectacular ... surely Bellow's greatest novel
*Malcolm Bradbury*
A writer of genius
*Sunday Times*
Nobody else has ever sat down and wallowed to this extent in his
own life, with full art
*John Berryman*
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