Penguin Books Australia

THE LIFE OF A MASTER, TOLD IN LETTERS

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, three National Book awards, and the Nobel Prize in Literature, Saul Bellow wrote marvellously acute, unsparing, tender, ferocious, hilarious, and wise letter throughout his long life (1915-2005).

Friends, lovers, wives, colleagues, and fans all cross these pages.  Some of the finest letters are to his fellow writers-William Faulkner, John Cheever, John Berryman, Ralph Ellison, J.F. Powers, Karl Shapiro, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, John Auerbach, Stanley Elkin, Richard Stern, James Salter, Martin Amis, and others. 

Intimate and ironical, rueful and amused, this vast self portrait-indeed, the autobiography Bellow never wrote-shows the influences at work in the man and illuminates his enduring legacy: the novels and stories that enduring legacy: the novels and stories that earned him a Nobel Prize and the admiration of readers the world over.