Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, in 1915. Two and a half years earlier, his father, Abraham (later ‘Abram’) Belo, had emigrated from Russia with his wife and three children – two boys and a girl, Abrahams Bellows – the surname was the result of a customs official’s error – chose Lachine because his sister, Rosa, had settled there along with another sister and brother. The family moved to Chicago in 1924 following a series of unsuccessful business ventures. ‘Memoirs of a Bootlegger’s Son’ (Granta 41), unusual among Bellow’s work for being narrated by an older brother, was written in 1954, the year after the publication of The Adventures of Augie March, but was itself never published. Bellow’s novels include Dangling Man (1944), The Victim (1947), Herzog (1964), Mr Sammler’s Planet (1970), Humboldt’s Gift (1975) and Ravelstein (2000). He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. He died in 2005.