Bellow, at 49, is at the pinnacle of American letters --- rich, famous, critically acclaimed. The expected trajectory is one of decline: volume one, rise; volume two, fall. Bellow never fell, producing in the latter half of his life some of his greatest fiction (MR. SAMMLER'S PLANET, HUMBOLDT'S GIFT), winning two more National Book Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize. At 80, he wrote his last story; at 85, he wrote RAVELSTEIN. In this volume, his life away from the desk, including his love life, is if anything more dramatic than in the first. In the public sphere, he is embroiled in controversy over foreign affairs, race, religion, education, social policy, the state of culture, the fate of the novel.

THE LIFE OF SAUL BELLOW marks the centenary of Saul Bellow’s birth, as well as the 10th anniversary of his death. It draws on unprecedented access to Bellow’s papers, including much previously restricted material, as well as interviews with more than 150 of the novelist’s relatives, close friends, colleagues and lovers. Zachary Leader chronicles a singular life in letters, offering original and nuanced accounts not only of the novelist’s development and rise to eminence, but of his many identities --- as writer, polemicist, husband, father, Chicagoan, Jew, American.