New Releases by Mordecai Richler

Duddy Kravitz, jeune homme de confession juive, fils de chauffeur de taxi, a grandi à Montréal pendant la guerre entre les boutiques minables et les terrains vagues de la rue Saint-Urbain. Et, pourtant, il voit son avenir en grand. Déterminé à échapper à la pauvreté à tout prix, Duddy multiplie les entreprises plus ou moins hasardeuses : il travaille comme serveur dans un hôtel de luxe, se lance dans une société de production audiovisuelle spécialisée dans les anniversaires, mariages et bar‐mitsvas, se retrouve embarqué dans un trafic de drogue à la frontière canadienne... Sans jamais perdre de vue son principal objectif : acheter une parcelle de terre dans les Laurentides, parce que son grand-père, Simcha, lui a toujours répété qu''un homme qui ne possédait pas de terres n''était personne. Grâce à Yvette, qui l''aime, Duddy voit la réussite lui sourire, jusqu''au jour où son ambition l''amène à commettre l''irréparable. Indestructible, amoral, intrépide, intrigant, séducteur, menteur invétéré... Duddy est un personnage haut en couleur inoubliable, touchant et hilarant. À travers le récit de ses aventures en forme de montagnes russes, Mordecai Richler nous offre une leçon de vie où il s''amuse à tourner en dérision l''amour, l''argent et la politique. Paru en 1959, L''Apprentissage de Duddy Kravitz a fondé la réputation internationale de ce "Tolstoï de l''autodérision''. (Le Monde des livres).

Moses Berger est encore enfant quand il entend pour la première fois le nom de Solomon Gursky. Ce personnage énigmatique deviendra bientôt pour lui une obsession qui l''incitera à mener une vaste enquête aux quatre coins du monde. Toute sa vie sera consacrée à démêler le vrai du faux dans l''histoire d''une famille aux origines drapées de mystère. Nous entraînant dans les bas-fonds londoniens du XIXe siècle, en Arctique avec l''expédition de Franklin en 1845, jusqu''en Amérique pendant la prohibition, des paysages vallonnés des Cantons-de-L''Est d''hier et d''aujourd''hui aux hauteurs de Westmount et ruelles du Mile End, Solomon Gursky est un roman puissant qui captive et terrasse par sa verve et son humour mordant. Dans cette traversée épique et hilarante, il est autant question d''Inuits convertis au judaïsme, de la Longue Marche de Mao, d''âmes échouées au passage du Nord-Ouest, des bars jazz de Montréal, que d''un corbeau maléfique tournoyant au-dessus de six générations de Gursky. Fresque totale de l''Amérique du Nord, de la fin de Far West au début de l''industrialisation, en bifurquant par la révolution russe, la Seconde Guerre mondiale et les seventies, Solomon Gursky, n''ayons pas peur des mots, est un chef-d''oeuvre.

Fins i tot els seus amics estarien d''acord que Barney Panofsky és un "marit maltractador, un falsari intel·lectual, un productor de merdes, un borratxo amb inclinació a la violència i segurament també un assassí. Però, quan els seus pitjors enemics ho intenten fer públic, Barney comença a escriure les seves pròpies memòries, i és així com el veurem passar de la crisi a l''èxit, dels baixos fons a la bona societat a Montreal, París i Londres. Les seves proeses acaben però amb un escàndol notable.

Transplanted to Toronto from his native Baffin Island, Atuk the poet is an unlikely overnight success. Eagerly adapting to a society steeped in pretension, bigotry, and greed, Atuk soon abandons the literary life in favour of more lucrative—and hazardous—schemes. Richler’s hilarious and devastating satire lampoons the self-deceptions of “the Canadian identity” and derides the hypocrisy of a nation that seeks cultural independence by slavishly pursuing the American dream.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is the novel that established Mordecai Richler as one of the world’s best comic writers. Growing up in the heart of Montreal’s Jewish ghetto, Duddy Kravitz is obsessed with his grandfather’s saying, “A man without land is nothing.” In his relentless pursuit of property and his drive to become a somebody, he will wheel and deal, he will swindle and forge, he will even try making movies. And in spite of the setbacks he suffers, the sacrifices he must make along the way, Duddy never loses faith that his dream is worth the price he must pay. This blistering satire traces the eventful coming-of-age of a cynical dreamer. Amoral, inventive, ruthless, and scheming, Duddy Kravitz is one of the most magnetic anti-heroes in literature, a man who learns the hard way that dreams are never exactly what they seem, even when they do come true.

A colony of Canadian and American writers and filmmakers, exiled by McCarthyist witch-hunts at home, find themselves in London, England, where they evolve a society every bit as merciless, destructive, and close-minded as that from which they have fled. The bonds of the group are strained when Norman Price, an academic turned hack writer, befriends an enigmatic German refugee. Ostracized by his colleagues, Norman soon perceives how easily conviction devolves into tyranny. Believing that “all alliances are discredited,” he enters a moral nightmare in which his choice of enemies is no longer clear. With relentless irony and biting accuracy, Mordecai Richler maps out a surreal territory of doubt, describing not only one man’s personal dilemma but the moral condition of modern society.

Young Noah Adler, passionate, ruthlessly idealistic, is the prodigal son of Montreal’ s Jewish ghetto. Finding tradition in league with self-delusion, he attempts to shatter the ghetto’s illusory walls by entering the foreign territory of the goyim. But here, freedom and self-determination continue to elude him. Eventually, Noah comes to recognize “justice and safety and a kind of felicity” in a world he cannot—entirely—leave behind. Richler’s superb account of Noah’s struggle to scale the walls of the ghetto overflows with rich comic satire. Son of a Smaller Hero is a compassionate, penetrating account of the nature of belonging, told with the savage realism for which Mordecai Richler’s fiction is celebrated.

The first book to be set in the new Richler typeface, commissioned by Random House of Canada Limited and Jack Rabinovitch in memory of Mordecai. Mordecai Richler’s final book pays homage to his personal heroes and celebrates a writer’s love of sport with his trademark irascibility, humour and acuity. Even while writing his bestselling novels, Mordecai Richler nurtured his obsession with sports, writing brilliantly on ice hockey, baseball, salmon fishing, bodybuilding, and wrestling for such publications as GQ, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Inside Sports, Commentary, and The New York Review of Books. Mordecai himself chose the pieces to include in Dispatches from the Sporting Life, and together they give us an intimate portrait of a man who admired the players and prized the struggle of sport -- as much as he enjoyed skewering those who made a mockery of its principles. His encounters with Pete Rose, Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe (“Mr. Elbows…the big guy with the ginger-ale bottle shoulders”) are by turns bizarre, moving and uproarious. Richler travelled with Guy LaFleur’s Montreal Canadiens (“Les Canadiens sont là!”), but also with the “far-from-incomparable” Trail Smoke Eaters to Stockholm for the world hockey championships, where Canadians are “widely known, and widely disliked.” There are wonderful pieces here about Ring Lardner, George Plimpton, Hank Greenberg and lady umpires, and a marvellous essay on his unlimited enthusiasm for the all-inclusive Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports, which includes among its champions Sandy Koufax, “who may well be the greatest pitcher of all time, regardless of race, colour or creed,” as well as one Steve Allan Hertz, an infielder who played five total games in Houston in 1964 and had a batting average of .000.

From his first days as a poolroom hustler playing truant from Baron Byng High School at the Rachel Pool Hall, Mordecai Richler has remained a snooker devotee. In his inimitable style, he delves into the fascinating world of snooker with pith and perception. But On Snooker is not just a lifelong fan''s memoir. It is a brilliantly entertaining history of the game and an account of snooker''s bad boy champions, including Alex (The Hurricane) Higgins, Cliff (The Grinder) Thorburn—both Canadian and interviewed for this book—with a chapter devoted to their special exploits and drug escapades. There are other colourful types: Ronnie (The Rocket) O''Sullivan, whose dad ("Ron''s the name, porn''s the game") is serving a life sentence for murder. Finally there is Stephen Hendry, the greatest player ever, who has won the world championship a record seven times. Mordecai Richler also makes clear why many great writers have been fascinated by sports and why snooker and literary readers go together, including Hemingway, Shulberg, Mailer, Roth, Plimpton, Martin Amis, and others. Very funny, passionate, and thoroughly researched on snooker tables from Montreal''s The Main to Dublin, On Snooker is a book lovers of Richler and of great sports writing will cherish.

Poor Jacob Two-Two. Not only must he say everything twice just to be heard over his four brothers and sisters, but he finds himself the prisoner of the dreaded Hooded Fang. What had he done to deserve such a punishment? The worst crime of all – insulting a grown-up! Although he’s small, Jacob is not helpless, especially when The Infamous Two come to his aid.

A rich collection drawn from the nearly thirty books of Mordecai Richler, featuring his writings on Montreal, New York, and London.

Ebullient and perverse, thrice married, Barney Panofsky has always clung to two cherished beliefs: life is absurd and nobody truly ever understands anybody else. But when his sworn enemy publicly states that Barney is a wife abuser, an intellectual fraud and probably a murderer, he is driven to write his own memoirs. Charged with comic energy and a wicked disregard for any pieties whatsoever,Barney''s Versionis a brilliant portrait of a man whom Mordecai Richler has made uniquely memorable for all time. It is also an unforgettable love story, a story about family and the riches of friendship.

Berger, son of the failed poet L.B. Berger, is in the grips of an obsession. The Gursky family with its colourful bootlegging history, its bizarre connections with the North and the Inuit, and its wildly eccentric relations, both fascinates and infuriates him. His quest to unravel their story leads to the enigmatic Ephraim Gursky: document forger in Victorian England, sole survivor of the ill-fated Franklin expedition and charasmatic religious leader of the Arctic. Of Ephraim''s three grandsons, Bernard has fought, wheeled and cheated his way to the head of a liquor empire. His brother Morrie has reluctantly followed along. But how does Ephraim''s protege, Solomon, fit in? Elusive, mysterious and powerful, Solomon Gursky hovers in the background, always out of Moses'' grasp, but present-like an omen.

De Canadese auteur beschrijft zaken, toestanden en mensen in zijn geboorteland die hem amuseren, ergeren of op een andere manier uitzonderlijk zijn