Hooray! You have added the first book to your bookshelf. Check it out now!
[−]
  • Search Digit-count Valid ISBN Invalid ISBN Valid Barcode Invalid Barcode
Blog this item

Ravelstein

(Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

By Saul Bellow

(12)

| Paperback | 9780141001760

Like Ravelstein?
Join aNobii to see if your friends read it, and discover similar books!

Sign up for free

Book Description

Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously-and much beyond his means. His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictioContinue

Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously-and much beyond his means. His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictions about the ideas which sustain humankind, or kill it, and much to Ravelstein's own surprise, he does and becomes a millionaire. Ravelstein suggests in turn that Chick write a memoir or a life of him, and during the course of a celebratory trip to Paris the two share thoughts on mortality, philosophy and history, loves and friends, old and new, and vaudeville routines from the remote past. The mood turns more somber once they have returned to the Midwest and Ravelstein succumbs to AIDS and Chick himself nearly dies.

Deeply insightful and always moving, Saul Bellow's new novel is a journey through love and memory. It is brave, dark, and bleakly funny: an elegy to friendship and to lives well (or badly) lived.

Critics

  • Write me up when I'm gone

    Ravelstein Saul Bellow Viking, £16.99, 233pp Buy it at BOL Is this fiction, exactly? Abe Ravelstein, the brilliant, self-mocking, high-living, ever-opinionated hero of Saul Bellow's new work, has asked the narrator, Chick, a favour. "I'd like you to ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • Life and Saul

    Ravelstein Saul Bellow Viking £16.99, pp233 Buy it at BOL Saul Bellow's thirteenth novel is a quietly wayward piece of work, dealing with last things as befits an octogenarian (illness, death, the persistence or other wise of the soul) but resisting ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

2 Reviews

Login or Sign Up to write a review

  • L'eros è un risarcimento concesso da Zeus, forse per ragioni politiche sue. E la ricerca della tua metà perduta è senza speranza. L'incontro sessuale produce una sorta di momentanea amnesia, ma la dolorosa consapevolezza della mutilazione è permanente.

    Is this helpful?

    Luca Leone said on Nov 28, 2011 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

  • Perhaps you need to be more familiar with the apparently famous real academic (Alan Bloom) that this is based on but even after finishing this I was left wondering why base a whole novel on him. Perhaps a standard biography might have answered that question but I feel this book was written for the c ... (continue)

    Perhaps you need to be more familiar with the apparently famous real academic (Alan Bloom) that this is based on but even after finishing this I was left wondering why base a whole novel on him. Perhaps a standard biography might have answered that question but I feel this book was written for the cognoscenti who know the man.

    Is this helpful?

    huntch said on Jun 15, 2009 about the Others edition | Add your feedback

Book Details

Improve data of this book

Prices Change currency & sellers

ISBN Edition List Sale Seller
9780141001760 Paperback $15.00 $12.82 bn.com
$15.00 $10.23 The Book Depository
Other editions →
Added to Shelf Added to Wish List

Inline Translation Mode

Left click to navigate, right click to translate.

inline translation guide

or close

Inline translation is not ready for this page yet.

Inline translation mode.

Share this page with your friends.

The viewport has not loaded.