Humboldt's Gift

By Saul Bellow

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Bellow's 1975 novel, awarded the Pulitzer Prize, is narrated by Charlie Citrine, a successful Chicago writer whose life is falling apart. He looks back on his friendship with his mentor, Von Humboldt Fleisher, a poet of great promise who died poor and forgotten. As Citrine deals with an ex-wife, a gangster and a girlfriend, Humboldt's legacy reaches him in an unexpected way.

Recommended by 1 person

• Barack Obama: “Some of the great books by Jewish authors like Philip Roth or Saul Bellow, they are steeped with this sense of being an outsider, longing to get in, not sure what you're giving up — what you're willing to give up and what you're not willing to give up.”