To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account

Here you sit at dinner with charming people in a dining room like any other. Yet you know that your hostess has lost a son, that her sister lost children in the 1973 war...in the domestic ceremony of passed dishes and filled glasses the thoughts of a destructive enemy are hard to grasp. What you do know is that there is one fact of Jewish life left unchanged by the creation of a Jewish State: 'You cannot take your right to love for granted...'

The New York Times, 1976 - Irving Howe

Steeped in the skepticisms of Chicago but still responsive to the war-cries of ideology, Bellow proves a keep listener. Like every other visitor to Israel, he soon tumbles into "a gale of conversation." He loves it: it makes him feel at home.

A literary giant, Saul Bellow loomed large over writers attempting the Great American Novel, since many would argue that he has already achieved this feat at least once over. He was considered a foremost chronicler of the Jewish-American post-war experience, but the "human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work" are what won him the Nobel, and helped him transcend cultural and national borders.