Saul Bellow was a Nobel Prize-winning Canadian-American novelist.
Born Solomon Bellows in Lachine, Quebec, two years after his Lithuanian-Jewish parents emigrated from Saint Petersburg, Russia, Bellows would go on to become one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. At nine, his family moved to the West Side of Chicago, which became the inspiration for much of his work. Rebelling against his mother’s wishes for him to become a rabbi or a concert pianist, Bellow pursued a career in writing.
Bellow studied Sociology and Anthropology and, during the Second World War, he served in the merchant marine, during which time he wrote his first novel. In 1948, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which he used to support himself in Paris while writing. Returning to the US, Bellows taught at Yale University, the University of Minnesota, New York University, Princeton University, University of Puerto Rico, University of Chicago, Bard College and Boston University.
Bellow won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976 for Humboldt’s Gift. He also received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times and, in 1990, he received the National Book Foundation’s lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
Bellow was married five times, all but the last ending in divorce, and he fathered his fourth child at age 84.
Learn More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Bellow
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/17/the-five-essential-saul-bellow-novels
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1976/bellow-bio.html
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/11/young-saulhttp://www.biography.com/people/saul-bellow-9206329
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/17/i-got-a-scheme-the-moment-saul-bellow-found-his-voice
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/04/saul-bellow-biography-zachary-leader-martin-amis