Herzog: Saul Bellow (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Bellow, Saul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141184876 ISBN 13: 9780141184876

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2001

Synopsis

Saul Bellow's Herzog is part confessional, part exorcism, and a wholly unique achievement in postmodern fiction.

Is Moses Herzog losing his mind? His formidable wife Madeleine has left him for his best friend, and Herzog is left alone with his whirling thoughts - yet he still sees himself as a survivor, raging against private disasters and the myriad catastrophes of the modern age. In a crumbling house which he shares with rats, his head buzzing with ideas, he writes frantic, unsent letters to friends and enemies, colleagues and famous people, the living and the dead, revealing the spectacular workings of his labyrinthine mind and the innermost secrets of his troubled heart.

This Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Malcolm Bradbury

'Spectacular ... surely Bellow's greatest novel'
Malcolm Bradbury

'A masterpiece ... Herzog's voice, for all its wildness and strangeness and foolishness, is the voice of a civilization, our civilization'
The New York Times Book Review

About this title

Review:

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)

From the Back Cover:

A masterful twist on the epistolary novel, Saul Bellow's Herzog is part confessional, part exorcism, and a wholly unique achievement in postmodern fiction. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction by Malcolm Bradbury in Penguin Modern Classics.

Is Moses Herzog losing his mind? His formidable wife Madeleine has left him for his best friend, and Herzog is left alone with his whirling thoughts - yet he still sees himself as a survivor, raging against private disasters and the myriad catastrophes of the modern age. In a crumbling house which he shares with rats, his head buzzing with ideas, he writes frantic, unsent letters to friends and enemies, colleagues and famous people, the living and the dead, revealing the spectacular workings of his labyrinthine mind and the innermost secrets of his troubled heart.

Saul Bellow (1915-2005) was a Canadian-born American writer who enjoyed a dazzling career as a novelist, marked with numerous literary prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. His books include The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, More Die of Heartbreak, Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories, Mr. Sammler's Planet, Seize The Day and The Victim.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0141184876
• ISBN 13: 9780141184876
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368