Herzog (Penguin Classics)

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A novel complex, compelling, absurd and realistic, Herzog became a classic almost as soon as it was published in 1964. In it Saul Bellow tells the tale of Moses E. Herzog, a tragically confused intellectual who suffers from the breakup of his second marriage, the general failure of his life and the specter of growing up Jewish in the middle part of the 20th century. He responds to his personal crisis by sending out a series of letters to all kinds of people. The letters in total constitute a thoughtful examination of his own life and that which has occurred around him. What emerges is not always pretty, but serves as gritty foundation for this absorbing novel.


The New York Times Book Review, Julian Moynahan
It is a masterpiece.... Herzog is a great book because it has great characters.


The New York Times Book Review
A masterpiece.


Book Description
In one of his finest achievements, Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow presents a multifaceted portrait of a modern-day hero, a man struggling with the complexity of existence and longing for redemption.

Introduction by Philip Roth


Download Description
This concise supplement to Saul Bellow's Herzog helps students understand the overall structure of the work, actions and motivations of the characters, and the social and cultural perspectives of the author.


About the Author
Saul Bellow, author of eleven novels and numerous novellas and stories, is the only novelist to receive three National Book Awards. He has also received the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Book Award Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Philip Roth, acclaimed author of The Human Stain and many other works of fiction, is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Medal of Arts from the White House.


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This age is full of fearfull abysses. If people are to go ahead they must move and into and through these abysses. The old definitions of balance and sanity do not help on this journey, but the ideals these terms gesture at remain, even though they require fresh definition. Love still counts, justice still counts, and particularly intellectual and emotional courage still count. This book reserves its sharpest criticism for those people...who try to cope homeopathically with the threat of violence under which we all live by cultivating an analogous, imaginative violence or intemperate despair.


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