A penniless and parentless Chicago boy growing up in the Great Depression, Augie March drifts through life latching onto a wild succession of occupations, including butler, thief, dog-washer, sailor and salesman. He is a ‘born recruit’, easily influenced by others who try and mould his destiny. Not until he tangles with the glamorous Thea, a huntress with a trained eagle, can he attempt to break free. A modern day Everyman on an odyssey in search of reality and identity, Augie March is the star performer in Bellow’s exuberant, richly observed human variety show.

Saul Bellow was born in Canada in 1915 and grew up in Chicago. He attended Chicago, Northwestern and Wisconsin universities and has a B.Sc. in anthropology. He has been a visiting lecturer at the universities of Princeton and New York and associate professor at the University of Minnesota. He has also lived in Paris and travelled extensively in Europe. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and he has received a grant from the Ford Foundation. He is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and was elected the third Neil Gunn Fellow by the Scottish Arts Council in 1976. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, the first American to win the prize since John Steinbeck in 1962. The Royal Swedish Academy, which makes the award, singled out Seize the Day for especial praise, as one of the classic works of our time. In 1977 Saul Bellow won the Gold Medal for the Novel, which is awarded every sixth year by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1978 he won the (USA) National Arts Club Gold Medal of Honor. In 1984 President Mitterrand made him a Commander of the Legion of Honour.

Saul Bellow has contributed stories and reviews to many leading American magazines and quarterlies. His books, many of which are published by Penguin, include Dangling Man (1944); The Victim (1948); The Adventures of Augie March (1953) which, like Herzog (1964) and Mr Sammler's Planet (1970), won the National Book Award; Seize the Day (1956); Henderson the Rain King (1959); The Last Analysis (1966); Humboldt's Gift (1975), which won the Pulitzer Prize; To Jerusalem and Back (1976), his first non-fiction work; More Die of Heartbreak (1987); A Theft (1989); and The Bellarosa Connection (1989). The last two novellas are also published in Something to Remember Me By (1991), together with one new story. His recent book, It All Adds Up, is a collection of essays.

Saul Bellow died in 2005.