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The Adventures of Augie March (Penguin Modern Classics)

The Adventures of Augie March (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Christopher Hitchens (Introduction), Christopher Hitchens (Introduction), Saul Bellow (Author)

  • New

    paperback

    $12.56

  • New

    Hardcover 1995

    $14.16
Synopsis

Saul Bellow's American masterpiece, "The Adventures of Augie March" includes an introduction by Christopher Hitchens in "Penguin Modern Classics". A penniless and parentless Chicago boy growing up in the Great Depression, Augie March drifts through life latching on to a wild succession of occupations, including butler, thief, dog-washer, sailor and salesman. He is a 'born recruit', easily influenced by others who try to mould his destiny. Not until he tangles with the glamorous Thea, a huntress with a trained eagle, can he attempt to break free. A modern day everyman on an odyssey in search of reality and identity, Augie March is the star of star performer in a richly observed human variety show, a modern-day Columbus in search of reality and fulfilment. 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". If you enjoyed "The Adventures of Augie March", you might like John Updike's "Rabbit, Run", also available in "Penguin Classics". "The Adventures of Augie March is the Great American Novel. Search no further". (Martin Amis, "Guardian"). "Funny, poignant, crowded with carnivalesque types and yet narrated by a voice that is lonely and simple, it is Bellow's fat comic masterpiece". ("Observer").

$12.56

Quantity

11 in stock

More Information

Format: paperback
 Publisher: Penguin Classics
Published:
ISBN 10: 0141184868
ISBN 13: 9780141184869

Media Reviews
The Adventures of Augie March is the Great American Novel. Search no further.
The Adventures of Augie March is the Great American Novel. Search no further. (Martin Amis)
If there's a candidate for the Great American Novel, I think this is it. (Salman Rushdie)
[Bellow's] body of work is more capacious of imagination and language than anyone else's...If there's a candidate for the Great American Novel, I think this is it. -Salman Rushdie, The Sunday Times (London)
[Bellow s] body of work is more capacious of imagination and language than anyone else s If there s a candidate for the Great American Novel, I think this is it. Salman Rushdie, The Sunday Times (London)
Author Bio
Saul Bellow was born in 1915 to Russian emigre parents. As a young child in Chicago, Bellow was raised on books - the Old Testament, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Chekhov - and learned Hebrew and Yiddish. He set his heart on becoming a writer after reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, contrary to his mother's hopes that he would become a rabbi or a concert violinist. He was educated at the University of Chicago and North-Western University, graduating in Anthropology and Sociology; he then went on to work for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Bellow 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). Saul 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'. Bellow's 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'.