Humboldt’s Gift

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What to expect

For years, they were the best of friends: Humboldt, a grand, erratic figure, and Charlie, a young man of frenzied and noble longings. But by the 1970s, Humboldt has died a failure, and Charlie's success-ridden life has taken various turns for the worse. Then Humboldt acts from the grave to change Charlie's life by leaving him something in his will.

Now Charlie is middle-aged and his days are cluttered with comic absurdities. A thinker, he longs to come from left field and knock them all dead. But his ex-wife has him enmeshed in lawsuits; he is held in thrall by a sexually-beguiling but unsuitable young woman; he has fallen into the hands of a neurotic mafioso; and his career seems to have ground to a halt. How the gentle but resilient Charlie comes to know how to triumph over his ever more ridiculous tribulations is the great discovery of Humboldt's Gift.

Critics Review

  • “A crazy mess of a novel and an abiding testament to the vital exuberance of Saul Bellow’s genius…Life bursts from the page.”

    Los Angeles Times

  • “Sharp, erudite, beautifully measured…[Bellow] is one of the most gifted chroniclers of the Western world.”

    Times (London)

  • “Bellow at his best…funny, vibrant, ironic, self-mocking, and wise, a thoroughly delightful novel on every score.”

    San Francisco Examiner

  • “This production is exceedingly well narrated by Christopher Hurt, whose narrator’s voice conveys the various moods of the main character, Charles Citrine, an aging Lothario, battling the aging process and his writer’s block.”

    AudioFile

  • “[Hurt’s] expression and inflection and his congenial voice make this book easy to listen to.”

    Kliatt

  • “Energized chaos…The novel sprawls in picaresque fashion.”

    Kirkus Reviews

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