Quotes from book
The Dean's December

The Dean's December

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


Saul Bellow photo
Saul Bellow photo

“There are evils, as someone has pointed out, that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever — money, for instance, or war.”

The Dean’s December (1982) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-140-18913-0], ch. 13, p. 140
General sources

Similar authors

Saul Bellow photo
Saul Bellow 103
Canadian-born American writer 1915–2005
Margaret Atwood photo
Margaret Atwood 348
Canadian writer
Alice Munro photo
Alice Munro 38
Canadian novelist
Julio Cortázar photo
Julio Cortázar 29
Argentinian writer
Brian Tracy photo
Brian Tracy 63
American motivational speaker and writer
William Faulkner photo
William Faulkner 214
American writer
Dale Carnegie photo
Dale Carnegie 98
American writer and lecturer
Elias Canetti photo
Elias Canetti 43
Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist,…
Jean Vanier photo
Jean Vanier 36
Canadian humanitarian
Kazuo Ishiguro photo
Kazuo Ishiguro 76
Japanese-born British author