(born June 10, 1915, Lachine, near Montreal, Que., Can.—died April 5, 2005, Brookline, Mass., U.S.) Canadian-born U.S. novelist. Born to an immigrant Russian Jewish family, he was fluent in Yiddish from childhood.
His family moved to Chicago when he was nine; he grew up and attended college there and, after some years in New York, returned to teach in Chicago. His works, which make him representative of the Jewish American writers whose works became central to American literature after World War II, deal with the modern urban dweller, disaffected by society but not destroyed in spirit; his originality lay partly in his combination of cultural sophistication and street wisdom. His works include The Adventures of Augie March (1953, National Book Award), Seize the Day (1956), Henderson the Rain King (1959), Herzog (1964, National Book Award), Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970, National Book Award), Humboldt's Gift (1975, Pulitzer Prize), The Dean's December (1982), and Ravelstein (2000). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.
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