“THE BEST NOVEL TO COME OUT OF AMERICA—OR ENGLAND— FOR A DECADE”

BELLOW, Saul. The Victim. New York: Vanguard, (1947). Octavo, original black cloth, original dust jacket. $1750.

First edition of the second book by Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, signed by him.

V.S. Pritchett praised Saul Bellow's The Victim as "'the best novel to come out of America—or England—for a decade." A writer who "gave immediacy to the American," Bellow wrote "in a distinctive, immediately recognizable style that blended high and low, colloquial and mandarin, wisecrack and aphorism" (New York Times). In The Victim, the only one of his novels to deal "specifically with anti-Semitism… Bellow's trademark is the popular-novel theme which is, through great richness of language and subtlety of insight, transformed into something highly distinguished. The bigger novels… are brilliant but a little shrill in comparison with this quiet early masterpiece" (Burgess, 99 Novels, 37).

Cloth fine and fresh. Dust jacket with only lightest wear. A fine signed copy.