The Life of Saul Bellow, Volume 1

“The most purely delicious literary biography that I’ve come across. Leader’s calm, gradual, but serenely excited prose vibrates with the joy of his thought coalescing with his subject.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“The Life of Saul Bellow will prove definitive. Leader is respectful but unintimidated, balanced but never anodyne, and his literary criticism, like his prose, is unfailingly stylish and acute.” —Vanity Fair

“Unsurpassable. It is a valuable resource, and the prose is clear and poised.” —New York Review of Books

“Will surely become the standard biography of Bellow for years to come.” —Washington Post

“Leader’s Life of Saul Bellow is not merely head and shoulders above its predecessors, but given the depth of his research and judgment and its broad scope, it is hard to imagine it being bettered anytime soon.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Leader gratifyingly shows how Bellow transformed his personal limitations into liberating art.” —New York Magazine

“It’s a terrific biography. It’s also a first-rate piece of literary criticism.” —The Guardian
“A fascinating analysis.” —BBC

“Zachary Leader’s Life of Saul Bellow is already the equal of Richard Ellmann’s great Life of Joyce. . . . Scrupulous, dispassionate, morally sensitive, profoundly informative and marvellously acute in its literary judgements. It’s a miracle of lucidly marshalled detail.” —Times Literary Supplement (Books of the Year)

“The first volume by Zachary Leader might be the most intelligent, fair-minded and most carefully furnished Life of a contemporary novelist I have read.” —London Review of Books

“Entrancing. We not only learn about Bellow’s life project; we feel it take shape with uncompromising determination.” —Wall Street Journal

“A meticulous and masterful first-part biography…Leaves readers hungry for the next instalment.” —Economist

“This magisterial biography is a fine testament to a life that was—at every step of the way—lived with exhilarating passion.”  —Toronto Star

“Magnificent. . . . never prurient, always calm and morally intelligent—and unbelievably lucid, given the many-stranded complexity of the material.” —Sunday Times (Literature Book of the Year)

 “Uncommonly good. . . . [Leader] has not only made himself familiar with all of Bellow’s facts. He has also made the vigilant reader welcome to them.”  —Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

“Leader’s research here…is astonishing. It is a banquet, a profoundly serious and scholarly examination of an important American writer.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Leader’s Life of Saul Bellow is likely to remain the definitive biography. . . . Leader has our gratitude.” —Commentary

 “Authorized and judicious. . . . Excellent. . . . Leader has clearly done new and prodigious work.” —Jewish Review of Books

“Will now stand as the definitive Bellow biography.” —Kirkus (Starred)

“An impressive achievement, this biography gives noble due to one of the 20th century’s most significant writers.”—Publishers Weekly (PW Pick)