The Cambridge Companion to: The Cambridge Companion to Saul Bellow

By: Victoria Aarons

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Synopsis: Saul Bellow is one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century American literature. Bellow's work explores the most important cultural and social experiences of his era: the impact of the Holocaust, the urban experience of European immigrants from a Jewish perspective, the fraught failures of the Vietnam War, the ideological seductions of Marxism and Modernism, and the changing attitudes concerning gender and race. This Companion demonstrates the complexity of this formative writer by emphasizing the ways in which Bellow's works speak to the changing conditions of American identity and culture from the post-war period to the turn of the twenty-first century. Individual chapters address the major themes of Bellow's work over more than a half-century of masterfully crafted fiction, articulating some of the most significant cultural experiences of the American twentieth century. It provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of a key figure in American literature.