More Die of Heartbreak

By Saul Bellow

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Saul Bellow's 1987 novel is narrated by Kenneth Trachtenberg, a young professor of Russian literature in a Midwestern city, who is devoted to his uncle, Benn Crader, a world-famous botanist. Benn understands plants far better than people, and when he makes a sudden and disastrous marriage to a rich young woman, Kenneth tries to save him from her ambitious family.

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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.”