The Bellarosa Connection

By Saul Bellow

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Narrated by the founder of a memory-training institute in Philadelphia, Bellow's short 1989 novel looks back on Harry Fonstein, a cousin by marriage. Fonstein was rescued from Fascist Italy by a secret network run by the Broadway producer Billy Rose, who later refused ever to meet him or hear his thanks. The story is about memory, gratitude and American Jewish life after the Holocaust.

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• 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.”