Bellow, Saul (1915-2005)

Canadian-born US novelist. From his first novel, Dangling Man (1944), Bellow typically set his naturalistic narratives in Chicago and made his central character an anxious, Jewish-American intellectual. Other works, known for their skilled characterization, include The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Herzog (1964), Mr Sammler's Planet (1970), and Humboldt's Gift (1975). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.

In The Adventures of Augie March and Henderson the Rain King (1959), he created confident and comic picaresque heroes, while Herzog pitches a comic but distressed scholar into a world of darkening humanism. Later works, developing Bellow's depiction of an age of urban disorder and indifference, include The Dean's December (1982), More Die of Heartbreak (1987), and the novella A Theft (1989). Other works include Him with His Foot in His Mouth (1984), Something to Remember Me By (1992), The Actual (1997), and Ravelstein (2000). He won the National Book Award in 1954, 1965, and 1971, and the Pulitzer Prize in 1976.

Bellow was born to Russian immigrant parents in Lachine, Québec, Canada, and moved to the USA with his family in 1924. After two years at the University of Chicago, Illinois, he moved to Northwestern University, from which he graduated in 1937. He has taught at various colleges, including Princeton, Bard, and the University of Chicago. He has been editor of the literary magazine News from the Republic of Letters since 1997.