logo
Richlerauthor

Mordecai Richler

4.20

Average rating

1

Books

Mordecai Richler was a Canadian writer. His best-known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Barney's Version (1997). His 1970 novel St. Urbain's Horseman and 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here were nominated for the Booker Prize. He is also well known for the Jacob Two-Two fantasy series for children. In addition to his fiction, Richler wrote numerous essays about the Jewish community in Canada and Canadian and Quebec nationalism. 

Richler's Oh, Canada! Oh, Quebec! (1992), a collection of essays about nationalism and anti-Semitism, generated considerable controversy. The son of Lily (née Rosenberg) and Moses Isaac Richler, a scrap metal dealer, Richler was born on January 27, 1931, in Montreal, Quebec, and raised on St. Urbain Street in that city's Mile End area. He learned English, French, and Yiddish and graduated from Baron Byng High School. 

Richler enrolled in Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) to study but did not complete his degree. Years later, Richler's mother published an autobiography, The Errand Runner: Memoirs of a Rabbi's Daughter (1981), which discusses Mordecai's birth and upbringing and their sometimes difficult relationship. (Mordecai Richler's grandfather and Lily Richler's father was Rabbi Yehudah Yudel Rosenberg, a celebrated rabbi in both Poland and Canada and a prolific author of many religious texts, as well as religious fiction and non-fiction works on science and history geared for religious communities.)

Richler moved to Paris at age nineteen, intent on following in the footsteps of a previous generation of literary exiles, the so-called Lost Generation of the 1920s, many of whom were from the United States. Richler returned to Montreal in 1952, working briefly at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, then moved to London in 1954. He published seven of his ten novels and considerable journalism while living in London.

Worrying "about being so long away from the roots of my discontent," Richler returned to Montreal in 1972. He repeatedly wrote about Montreal's Anglophone community, especially his former neighborhood, portraying it in multiple novels. In 1954, Richler married Catherine Boudreau in England, nine years his senior. On the eve of their wedding, he met and was smitten by Florence Mann (née Wood), then married to Richler's close friend, screenwriter Stanley Mann.

Some years later, Richler and Mann both divorced their prior spouses and married each other, and Richler adopted her son Daniel. The couple had four other children together: Jacob, Noah, Martha, and Emma. These events inspired his novel Barney's Version. Richler died of cancer on July 3, 2001, in Montreal, aged 70. He was also a second cousin of novelist Nancy Richler.

Throughout his career, Richler wrote a journalistic commentary and contributed to The Atlantic Monthly, Look, The New Yorker, The American Spectator, and other magazines. Richler was a newspaper columnist for The National Post and Montreal's The Gazette in his later years. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he authored a monthly book review for Gentlemen's Quarterly.

Richler was often critical of Quebec but of Canadian federalism as well. Another favorite Richler target was the government-subsidized Canadian literary movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Journalism constituted an important part of his career, bringing him income between novels and films.

Best author’s book

pagesback-cover
4.2

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

Ryan Holiday
Read