The Dean's December

The Dean's December

First edition cover
Author	Saul Bellow
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Harper & Row
Publication date	1982
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	346
Preceded by	Humboldt's Gift
Followed by	More Die of Heartbreak

The Dean's December is a 1982 novel by the American author Saul Bellow. It is his ninth novel, and the first novel Bellow published after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976.

Brief synopsis

Set in Chicago and Bucharest, the book's main character, Albert Corde, a meditative academic who faces a crisis, accompanies his Romanian-born astrophysicist wife to her Communist-ruled native country, where they deal with the death of his mother-in-law. This sojourn allows Corde to observe the workings of a totalitarian regime in particular and the Eastern Bloc in general, a perspective which provides him with insight into the human condition.

Reception

In the The New York Times Book Review, critic Robert Towers concluded, “The Dean's December confirms me in the opinion I have held since, nearly 30 years ago, I read The Adventures of Augie March (having, as an impecunious instructor, paid out hard cash for my hardcover copy just off the press): Sentence by sentence, page by page, Saul Bellow is simply the best writer that we have.”^[1]

References

External links

• The Dean's December at Open Library
• The New York Times Book Review on The Dean’s December

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