Humboldt's Gift

Front Cover
Penguin, 1996 - Fiction - 487 pages
For many years, the great poet Von Humboldt Fleisher and Charlie Citrine, a young man inflamed with a love for literature, were the best of friends. At the time of his death, however, Humboldt is a failure, and Charlie's life has reached a low point: his career is at a standstill, and he's enmeshed in an acrimonious divorce, infatuated with a highly unsuitable young woman, and involved with a neurotic mafioso. And then Humboldt acts from beyond the grave, bestowing upon Charlie an unexpected legacy that may just help him turn his life around.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
44
Section 2
64
Section 3
71
Section 4
89
Section 5
91
Section 6
107
Section 7
117
Section 8
136
Section 15
291
Section 16
308
Section 17
326
Section 18
338
Section 19
366
Section 20
377
Section 21
399
Section 22
402

Section 9
141
Section 10
168
Section 11
194
Section 12
218
Section 13
229
Section 14
237
Section 23
426
Section 24
434
Section 25
459
Section 26
471
Section 27
Copyright

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About the author (1996)

Saul Bellow was born in Lachine, Quebec, Canada on June 10, 1915. He attended the University of Chicago, received a Bachelor's degree in sociology and anthropology from Northwestern University in 1937, and did graduate work at the University of Wisconsin. He taught at several universities including the University of Minnesota, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, New York University, and Boston University. His first novel, Dangling Man, was published in 1944. His other works include The Victim, Seize the Day, Henderson the Rain King, Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories, To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account, Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories, More Die of Heartbreak, and Something to Remember Me By. He received numerous awards including the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt's Gift, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and three National Book Awards for fiction for The Adventures of Augie March in 1954, Herzog in 1964, and Mr. Sammler's Planet in 1970. Also a playwright, he wrote The Last Analysis and three short plays, collectively entitled Under the Weather, which were produced on Broadway in 1966. He died on April 5, 2005.

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