Bellow, Saul

Bellow, Saul (1915– ), novelist, was born in Canada of Russian-Jewish parents, and educated from the age of 9 in Chicago, a city evoked in many of his works, including his first short novel, Dangling Man (1944). His subsequent works include The Victim (1947); The Adventures of Augie March (1953), an episodic first-person account of Augie's progress from Chicago, moving to Mexico, then Paris; Seize the Day (1956), a novella; Henderson the Rain King (1959), which records American millionaire Gene Henderson's quest for revelation and spiritual power in Africa, where he becomes rainmaker and heir to a kingdom; Herzog (1964), which reveals the inner life of a Jewish intellectual, Moses Herzog, driven to the verge of breakdown by his second wife's adultery with his close friend; Mr Sammler's Planet (1969); Humboldt's Gift (1974); More Die of Heartbreak (1987); and Ravelstein (2000). The Dean's December (1982) is a ‘tale of two cities’, both seen through the eyes of Albert Corde, who visits Bucharest to see his dying mother-in-law, where he reflects on the contrasts between the violence and corruption of Chicago and the bureaucratic chill of eastern Europe; the novel has, like much of Bellow's work, a strongly apocalyptic note.

Other works include The Actual (1997), a novella set amongst the Chicago super-rich; Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984); and Collected Stories (2001). Two novellas, A Theft (1989) and The Bellarosa Connection (1989), were included, with the title story, in Something to Remember Me By (1991). Bellow has also written non-fiction pieces, and has lectured in many universities. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.