Son of a Smaller Hero: Penguin Modern Classics Edition [Paperback]

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 thegoyim. 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 Herois a compassionate, penetrating account of the nature of belonging, told with the savage realism for which Mordecai Richler’s fiction is celebrated.“Mordecai Richler has proven beyond all doubt that he ranks with
this century’s best novelists.”
–Edmonton Journal

“Richler possesses a powerful and fecund imagination. . . .”
–Hamilton Spectator

“He is a gifted stylist, with a great ear for parody and comic dialogue…”
–New York Times Book Review

“Richler is a comic writer who sprays his personality on his fiction like a tomcat.”
–The Times(U.K.)Mordecai Richlerwas born in 1931 and raised in the working-class Jewish neighbourhood around St. Urbain Street, attending Sir George Williams College (now a part of Concordia University). As a novelist, journalist, screenwriter, and editor, Richler spent much of his career chronicling, celebrating, and criticizing the Montreal and the Canada of his youth. Whether the settings of his fiction are St. Urbain Street or European capitals, his major characters never forsake the Montreal world that shaped them. His most frequent voice is that of the satirist, rendering an honest account of his times with care and humour.

Richler's many honours includels