Most Popular Books by Mordecai Richler

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.

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

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

"In 1944, I was aware of three youth groups committed to the compelling idea of an independent Jewish state: Hashomer Hatza''ir (The Young Guard), Young Judaea, and Habonim (The Builders). Hashomer Hatza''ir was resolutely Marxist. According to intriguing reports I had heard, it was the custom, on their kibbutzim already established in Palestine, for boys and girls under the age of eighteen to shower together. Hashomer Hatza''ir members in Montreal included a boy I shall call Shloime Schneiderman, a high-school classmate of mine. In 1944, when we were still in eighth grade, Schloime enjoyed a brief celebrity after his photo appeared on the front page of the Montreal Herald. Following a two-cent rise in the price of chocolate bars, he had been a leader in a demonstration, holding high a placard that read: down with the 7cents chocolate bar. Hashomer Hatza''ir members wore uniforms at their meetings: blue shirts and neckerchiefs. "They had real court martials," wrote Marion Magid in a memoir about her days in Habonim in the Bronx in the early fifties, "group analysis, the girls were not allowed to wear lipstick." Whereas, in my experience, the sweetly scented girls who belonged to Young Judaea favored pearls and cashmere twinsets. They lived on leafy streets in the suburb of Outremont, in detached cottages that had heated towel racks, basement playrooms, and a plaque hanging on the wall behind the wet bar testifying to the number of trees their parents had paid to have planted in Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. I joined Habonim—the youth group of a Zionist political party, rooted in socialist doctrine—shortly after my bar mitzvah, during my first year at Baron Byng High School. I had been recruited by a Room 41 classmate whom I shall call Jerry Greenfeld..."

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.

Joshua Then and Now is about Joshua Shapiro today, and the Joshua he was. His father a boxer turned honest crook, his mother an erotic dancer whose greatest performance was at Joshua’s bar mitzvah, Joshua has overcome his inauspicious beginnings in the Jewish ghetto of Montreal to become a celebrated television writer and a successful journalist. But Joshua, now middle-aged, is not a happy man. Incapacitated by a freak accident, anguished by the disappearance of his WASP wife, and caught up in a sex scandal, Joshua is besieged by the press and tormented by the ghosts of his youth. Set in Montreal, the novel chronicles the rocky journey we all make between the countries of the past and the present. Raucous, opinionated, tender, Joshua Then and Now is a memorable excursion into Mordecai Richler''s comic universe.

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.

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.

In the swinging culture of sixties’ London, Canadian Mortimer Griffin is a beleaguered editor adrift in a sea of hypocrisy and deceit. Alone in a world where nobody shares his values but everyone wants the same things, Mortimer must navigate the currents of these changing times. Richler’s eccentric cast of characters include the gorgeous Polly, who conducts her life as though it were a movie, complete with censor-type cuts at all the climactic moments; Rachel Coleman, slinky Black Panther of the boudoir; Star Maker, the narcissistic Hollywood tycoon who has discovered the secret of eternal life; and a precocious group of school children with a taste for the teachings of the Marquis de Sade. Cocksure is a savagely funny satire on television, movies, and the entertainment industry. This is Mordecai Richler at his most caustic and wicked best.

In this beguiling collection of short stories and memoirs, first published in 1969, Mordecai Richler looks back on his childhood in Montreal, recapturing the lively panorama of St. Urbain Street: the refugees from Europe with their unexpected sophistication and snobbery; the catastrophic day when there was an article about St. Urbain Street in Time; Tansky’s Cigar and Soda with its “beat-up brown phonebooth” used for “private calls”; and tips on sex from Duddy Kravitz. Overflowing with humour, nostalgia, and wisdom, The Street is a brilliant introduction to Richler’s lifelong love-affair with St. Urbain Street and its inhabitants.

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.

Living in a rat-infested hotel in Franco’s post-war Spain, André Bennett, a Canadian painter, loves Toni, his girl friend, who wants him to return home. Roger Kraus, a Nazi on the run, shadows the young artist day and night. They meet on a bridge during the last night of the fiesta, and as the sky is shredded by exploding fireworks, the story draws to its violent climax. Originally published in 1954, The Acrobats marks Mordecai Richler’s stunning debut as a novelist.

St. Urbain’s Horseman is a complex, moving, and wonderfully comic evocation of a generation consumed with guilt—guilt at not joining every battle, at not healing every wound. Thirty-seven-year-old Jake Hersh is a film director of modest success, a faithful husband, and a man in disgrace. His alter ego is his cousin Joey, a legend in their childhood neighbourhood in Montreal. Nazi-hunter, adventurer, and hero of the Spanish Civil War, Joey is the avenging horseman of Jake’s impotent dreams. When Jake becomes embroiled in a scandalous trial in London, England, he puts his own unadventurous life on trial as well, finding it desperately wanting as he steadfastly longs for the Horseman’s glorious return. Irreverent, deeply felt, as scathing in its critique of social mores as it is uproariously funny, St. Urbain’s Horseman confirms Mordecai Richler’s reputation as a pre-eminent observer of the hypocrisies and absurdities of modern life.

When his parents bring a little green lizard home from their vacation in Kenya, Jacob Two-Two is thrilled. But as the days pass, he realizes that Dippy isn’t just an ordinary lizard at all. In fact, it becomes obvious to Jacob that Dippy’s not so little either. As Dippy grows bigger and bigger, he begins to attract some very big attention from some very important people. Before Jacob realizes, he is on the run from the entire government of Canada – and with a full-grown dinosaur!

Humorous account of Quebec''s language obsessed separatist movement.