New Releases by Mordecai Richler

Dans la famille Adler, il y a le grand-père, Melech, figure du ghetto juif de Montréal et gardien des traditions qui préside d''une main de fer aux destinées du clan et du dépôt de charbon qu''il possède. Il y a le fils, Wolf, bon à rien qui passe son temps à jouer aux cartes et à décevoir sa femme de toutes les manières possibles. Lui qui deviendra, par un fâcheux quiproquo – ou un heureux hasard, c''est selon –, l''idole de tout un quartier. Et, surtout, il y a le plus jeune, Noah, l''idéaliste qui ne supporte plus le carcan de son milieu et l''hypocrisie de ses aïeux. Noah, qui choisira de rompre avec ses proches pour tenter de forger sa liberté au volant d''un taxi et sur les bancs de l''université. Il ne tardera toutefois pas à découvrir que le monde étranger n''est pas moins rigide et codifié que celui qu''il a quitté. Avec cette saga familiale à la satire mordante, Mordecai Richler nous plonge dans le Montréal de l''après-guerre, celui des enseignes au néon de la rue Sainte-Catherine et des salles de billard enfumées de la Main, des appartements sans eau chaude du Mile End et des bars huppés du centre-ville. Une ville bigarrée où la révolte acharnée d''un jeune homme ne suffira pas à faire tomber les murs entre les communautés. Fils d''un ferrailleur, Mordecai Richler est né en 1931, rue Saint-Urbain, au cœur du Mile End, à Montréal. À l''âge de dix-neuf ans, il s''exile en Europe, d''abord en France et en Espagne, puis en Angleterre, où il publie L''Apprentissage de Duddy Kravitz en 1959. De retour au Canada en 1972, il s''installe dans les Cantons-de-l''Est avec sa femme Florence et leurs cinq enfants. Il meurt en 2001, laissant une œuvre incomparable à la renommée internationale.

Jake Hersh a-t-il tout raté ? A trente-sept ans, le réalisateur montréalais n''a pourtant pas grand-chose à se reprocher. Issu d''un milieu modeste, il jouit d''une petite réputation dans le milieu du cinéma et coule des jours heureux à Londres, aux côtés de sa belle shiksa, Nancy, et de leurs trois enfants. Mais lorsqu''une jeune Allemande l''accuse faussement d''agression sexuelle, c''est de sa propre vie que Jake se met à faire le procès. Pour échapper aux regrets qui l''accablent et aux poursuites qui menacent sa famille et sa carrière, il se prendra à fantasmer la vie de son cousin Joey. Cet ancien voyou des ruelles de Montréal deviendra, dans l''imagination féconde de Jake, le Cavalier de Saint-Urbain, héros de la guerre civile espagnole et pourfendeur de nazis, qui n''hésite pas à traquer l''infâme Dr Mengele jusqu''aux confins de la jungle sud?américaine.

"Le bouillant Barney Panofsky s''est toujours laissé guider par deux croyances : la vie est absurde et les humains sont incapables de se comprendre véritablement. Alors, pourquoi se priver? Beuveries, parties de hockey et de jambes en l''air, amours impossibles ... Du Paris de l''après-guerre à son Montréal natal, où il a fait fortune dans le cinéma et la télévision, Barney aura vécu intensément et sans jamais regarder derrière lui. Jusqu''au jour où son ennemi juré, un écrivain à succès, l''accusera publiquement d''être un batteur de femmes, un faux intellectuel et même un assassin. Forcé de se défendre, Barney, ivrogne et sénile, se plongera dans l''écriture de ses mémoires et son passé. Oeuvre majeure de la littérature canadienne, Le Monde selon Barney marque à la fois le point d''orgue et le point final de la riche carrière de Mordecai Richler. Dans ce roman déguisé en autobiographie, qui lui a valu le prix Giller en 1997 avant d''être porté au grand écran en 2010, l''auteur montréalais nous livre, avec une hargne et un humour plus dévastateurs que jamais, les confessions d''un homme au bord du gouffre, rongé par la rancoeur et les remords, mais animé d''une furieuse envie de vivre."--Quatrième de couverture.

Young Noah Adler, passionate, ruthlessly idealistic, is the prodigal son of Montreal’ s Jewish ghetto. Finding tradition in league with self-delusion, he attempts to shatter the ghetto’s illusory walls by entering the foreign territory of the goyim. But here, freedom and self-determination continue to elude him. Eventually, Noah comes to recognize “justice and safety and a kind of felicity” in a world he cannot—entirely—leave behind. Richler’s superb account of Noah’s struggle to scale the walls of the ghetto overflows with rich comic satire. Son of a Smaller Hero is a compassionate, penetrating account of the nature of belonging, told with the savage realism for which Mordecai Richler’s fiction is celebrated.

''Canadians of my generation were conditioned to believe that the world happened elsewhere.'' So at the tender age of nineteen Mordecai Richler left Canada to live and work in Europe. Now famous on both sides of the Atlantic for his comic novels - from The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz to St Urbain''s Horseman, Cocksure and Joshua Then and Now - he writes here of the country which he once again calls Home: the country that indelibly shaped his life and honed his comic gifts. He takes us from Toronto bars to the Yellowknife Golf Club (devoid of grass) just below the Arctic Circle, from Winnipeg, capital of Manitoba (''On entering the legislature, one is immediately confronted by two enormous buffalo'') and back to that fateful day when the Russians invaded and captured Canada''s own national sport - hockey. (''Nothing was ever the same again in Canada. Beer didn''t taste as good. The Rockies seemed smaller, the northern lights dimmer.'') He makes us understand the tensions between French and English Canadians, the controversial (and, so far, failed) separatist movement, the pain and the hilarity of the language war (the day, for example, Montreal police seized a cache not of heroin or cocaine but of 15,000 Dunkin'' Donuts bags - because they weren''t bilingual).

Quasi nulla piace ai lettori di Mordecai Richler quanto addentrarsi nell''albero genealogico di Barney Panofsky, sperando prima o poi di imbattersi nel vero progenitore romanzesco di uno dei personaggi più amati degli ultimi anni. Bene, con questo libro del 1980 la singolare caccia all''uomo iniziata, in Italia, tredici anni fa può considerarsi conclusa. Entra Joshua Shapiro, scrittore e giornalista di successo ricoverato in ospedale dopo la misteriosa sparizione dell’amatissima moglie, e dopo essere stato coinvolto in un clamoroso scandalo di natura sessuale. Nello stato confusionale in cui si trova, Joshua non è in grado di dire quale delle innumerevoli voci che circolano sul suo conto sia fondata, e quale invece debba considerarsi una calunnia. Per riuscirci, dovrà infatti andare molto indietro nel tempo, fino a un''infanzia affidata in parti uguali alla madre, nota nella zona di St. Urbain Street per i suoi spogliarelli, e al padre, un pugile a riposo e furfante in attività, molto ansioso di trasmettere al figlio i segreti del suo (secondo) mestiere. Cominciando dall''inizio – attraverso gli anni, le donne, gli amici, e la solita, incontenibile frenesia vitale – Joshua riuscirà, a modo suo, a comporre il rompicapo. Sarà una ricerca movimentata e molto lunga, per lui: ma per il lettore, come sempre e anche di più, persino troppo breve.

All’inizio di questo romanzo Duddy Kravitz ha quindici anni, ma si rade due volte al giorno nella speranza di farsi crescere il più in fretta possibile la barba. La vita non è facile, nel ghetto ebraico di Montreal, e la profezia del nonno («un uomo senza terra non è nessuno») incombe sul suo futuro come una condanna. O un invito a non arretrare di fronte a nulla pur di raggiungere lo scopo. Ed è in questo senso che Duddy la interpreta, costruendosi passo (esilarante) dopo passo un’impeccabile carriera di cialtrone, bugiardo, mancatore di parola, baro, libertino – in altre parole di sognatore, e di sognatore professionista, visto che il suo ultimo approdo, che gli garantirà denaro e gloria, sarà il cinema. In un qualsiasi quiz televisivo la domanda su chi sia l’autore di questa trama – o anche di una qualsiasi frase tratta a caso dal libro – verrebbe certamente scartata per eccessiva ovvietà, ma il romanzo della maturità di Richler pone un altro interrogativo destinato per fortuna a rimanere senza risposta, cioè se Duddy Kravitz sia Barney Panofsky da giovane, o Barney Panofsky sia Duddy Kravitz da vecchio. Al lettore, che già sa di non poter contare sulla testimonianza di due personaggi per propria natura adorabilmente inaffidabili, non resterà che scoprirlo da sé.

A chi lo incensava come l’inimitabile cantore del microcosmo ebraico di St Urbain Street, Mordecai Richler rispose da par suo, e cioè facendo saltare il tavolo con questo romanzo, il suo penultimo. Qui il racconto abbraccia infatti due secoli, due sponde dell’Atlantico e cinque generazioni di una dinastia ebraica in cui tutto è smisurato: vitalità, ricchezza, lusso, inclinazione al piacere in ogni sua forma. Ma nessuna grande famiglia è senza macchia, e la macchia dei Gursky si chiama Solomon, rampollo in disgrazia che pare essere stato presente, come Zelig più o meno negli stessi anni, in tutti i momenti cruciali del ventesimo secolo – la Lunga Marcia, l’ultima telefonata di Marilyn, le deposizioni del Watergate, il raid di Entebbe. Solomon rimarrebbe tuttavia un mistero, se della sua fenomenale parabola non decidesse di occuparsi il più improbabile dei biografi, Moses Berger, ex ragazzo prodigio rovinato dal rancore, dall’alcol, ma soprattutto dalle sue stesse maniacali indagini intorno a un unico soggetto: i Gursky. I lettori di Barney avranno certamente riconosciuto gli ingredienti base di ogni Richler da collezione: a sorprenderli, stavolta, sarà la loro imprevedibile miscela. "Solomon Gursky è stato qui" è stato pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1989.

Fins i tot els seus amics estarien d''acord que Barney Panofsky és un "marit maltractador, un falsari intel·lectual, un productor de merdes, un borratxo amb inclinació a la violència i segurament també un assassí. Però, quan els seus pitjors enemics ho intenten fer públic, Barney comença a escriure les seves pròpies memòries, i és així com el veurem passar de la crisi a l''èxit, dels baixos fons a la bona societat a Montreal, París i Londres. Les seves proeses acaben però amb un escàndol notable.

Charged with comic energy and a steely disregard for any pieties whatsoever, Barney''s Version is a major Richler novel, the most personal and feeling book of a long and distinguished career. Told in the first person, it gives us the life (and what a life!) of Barney Panofsky--whose trashy TV company, Totally Useless Productions, has made him a small fortune; whose three wives include a martyred feminist icon, a quintessential JCP (Jewish-Canadian Princess), and the incomparable Miriam, the perfect wife, lover, and mother--alas, now married to another man; who recalls with nostalgia and pain his young manhood in the Paris of the early fifties, and his lifelong passion for wine, women, and the Montreal Canadiens; who either did or didn''t murder his best friend, Boogie, after discovering him in bed with The Second Mrs. Panofsky; whose satirical eye for the idiocies of today''s Quebec separatists (as well as for every other kind of political correctness) manages to offend his entire acquaintanceship (and will soon be offending readers everywhere); and whose memory--though not his bile--is, in his sixty-seventh year, definitely slipping . . .

Joods-Canadese klassieker nu verfilmd met Paul Giamatti en Dustin Hoffman in de hoofdrollen. Barney Panofski, een oudere, Canadese tweederangs televisieproducent van Joodse afkomst besluit zijn memoires te schrijven omdat die van zijn gezworen vijand, waarin deze hem van moord beschuldigt, op het punt staan te verschijnen. En hij haalt uit: met sardonisch genoegen en bijtende spot geeft hij zijn versie van de gebeurtenissen en haalt hij de wereld van valse pretenties, of gewoon iedereen die hem dwars heeft gezeten, door zijn sarcastische mangel. Daarbij kan hij echter toch niet verhelen dat hij diep in zijn hart een romantische idealist is, een man met een nostalgisch verlangen naar zuiverheid en schoonheid. De bekentenissen van Barney, een hilarisch, onbetrouwbaar en ontroerend verslag van een tegendraads leven, is een virtuoze roman van meesterverteller Mordecai Richler, die eerder onder meer Joshua toen en nu en Salomon Gursky was hier (genomineerd voor de Booker Prize) schreef.

In this beguiling collection of short stories and memoirs, first published in 1969, Mordecai Richler looks back on his childhood in Montreal, recapturing the lively panorama of St. Urbain Street: the refugees from Europe with their unexpected sophistication and snobbery; the catastrophic day when there was an article about St. Urbain Street in Time; Tansky’s Cigar and Soda with its “beat-up brown phonebooth” used for “private calls”; and tips on sex from Duddy Kravitz. Overflowing with humour, nostalgia, and wisdom, The Street is a brilliant introduction to Richler’s lifelong love-affair with St. Urbain Street and its inhabitants.

Transplanted to Toronto from his native Baffin Island, Atuk the poet is an unlikely overnight success. Eagerly adapting to a society steeped in pretension, bigotry, and greed, Atuk soon abandons the literary life in favour of more lucrative—and hazardous—schemes. Richler’s hilarious and devastating satire lampoons the self-deceptions of “the Canadian identity” and derides the hypocrisy of a nation that seeks cultural independence by slavishly pursuing the American dream.

Joshua Then and Now is about Joshua Shapiro today, and the Joshua he was. His father a boxer turned honest crook, his mother an erotic dancer whose greatest performance was at Joshua’s bar mitzvah, Joshua has overcome his inauspicious beginnings in the Jewish ghetto of Montreal to become a celebrated television writer and a successful journalist. But Joshua, now middle-aged, is not a happy man. Incapacitated by a freak accident, anguished by the disappearance of his WASP wife, and caught up in a sex scandal, Joshua is besieged by the press and tormented by the ghosts of his youth. Set in Montreal, the novel chronicles the rocky journey we all make between the countries of the past and the present. Raucous, opinionated, tender, Joshua Then and Now is a memorable excursion into Mordecai Richler''s comic universe.

A colony of Canadian and American writers and filmmakers, exiled by McCarthyist witch-hunts at home, find themselves in London, England, where they evolve a society every bit as merciless, destructive, and close-minded as that from which they have fled. The bonds of the group are strained when Norman Price, an academic turned hack writer, befriends an enigmatic German refugee. Ostracized by his colleagues, Norman soon perceives how easily conviction devolves into tyranny. Believing that “all alliances are discredited,” he enters a moral nightmare in which his choice of enemies is no longer clear. With relentless irony and biting accuracy, Mordecai Richler maps out a surreal territory of doubt, describing not only one man’s personal dilemma but the moral condition of modern society.

St. Urbain’s Horseman is a complex, moving, and wonderfully comic evocation of a generation consumed with guilt—guilt at not joining every battle, at not healing every wound. Thirty-seven-year-old Jake Hersh is a film director of modest success, a faithful husband, and a man in disgrace. His alter ego is his cousin Joey, a legend in their childhood neighbourhood in Montreal. Nazi-hunter, adventurer, and hero of the Spanish Civil War, Joey is the avenging horseman of Jake’s impotent dreams. When Jake becomes embroiled in a scandalous trial in London, England, he puts his own unadventurous life on trial as well, finding it desperately wanting as he steadfastly longs for the Horseman’s glorious return. Irreverent, deeply felt, as scathing in its critique of social mores as it is uproariously funny, St. Urbain’s Horseman confirms Mordecai Richler’s reputation as a pre-eminent observer of the hypocrisies and absurdities of modern life.

"In 1944, I was aware of three youth groups committed to the compelling idea of an independent Jewish state: Hashomer Hatza''ir (The Young Guard), Young Judaea, and Habonim (The Builders). Hashomer Hatza''ir was resolutely Marxist. According to intriguing reports I had heard, it was the custom, on their kibbutzim already established in Palestine, for boys and girls under the age of eighteen to shower together. Hashomer Hatza''ir members in Montreal included a boy I shall call Shloime Schneiderman, a high-school classmate of mine. In 1944, when we were still in eighth grade, Schloime enjoyed a brief celebrity after his photo appeared on the front page of the Montreal Herald. Following a two-cent rise in the price of chocolate bars, he had been a leader in a demonstration, holding high a placard that read: down with the 7cents chocolate bar. Hashomer Hatza''ir members wore uniforms at their meetings: blue shirts and neckerchiefs. "They had real court martials," wrote Marion Magid in a memoir about her days in Habonim in the Bronx in the early fifties, "group analysis, the girls were not allowed to wear lipstick." Whereas, in my experience, the sweetly scented girls who belonged to Young Judaea favored pearls and cashmere twinsets. They lived on leafy streets in the suburb of Outremont, in detached cottages that had heated towel racks, basement playrooms, and a plaque hanging on the wall behind the wet bar testifying to the number of trees their parents had paid to have planted in Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. I joined Habonim—the youth group of a Zionist political party, rooted in socialist doctrine—shortly after my bar mitzvah, during my first year at Baron Byng High School. I had been recruited by a Room 41 classmate whom I shall call Jerry Greenfeld..."

"More than forty years of scribble, scribble, scribble, and I have been sued only once. . ." But this collection of essays is no less a pleasure to read for all that. Mordecai Richler is an exuberant essayist, with a combative wit and sharp eye, regularly offending some, endearing himself mightily to others, and always hugely entertaining. Like all great satirists, he is passionate about the world in which we live; it''s that appetite for life and friendship, his love of sanity and common sense as much as his hatred of sacred cows, that lies at the heart of this irresistible book.

The first book to be set in the new Richler typeface, commissioned by Random House of Canada Limited and Jack Rabinovitch in memory of Mordecai. Mordecai Richler’s final book pays homage to his personal heroes and celebrates a writer’s love of sport with his trademark irascibility, humour and acuity. Even while writing his bestselling novels, Mordecai Richler nurtured his obsession with sports, writing brilliantly on ice hockey, baseball, salmon fishing, bodybuilding, and wrestling for such publications as GQ, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Inside Sports, Commentary, and The New York Review of Books. Mordecai himself chose the pieces to include in Dispatches from the Sporting Life, and together they give us an intimate portrait of a man who admired the players and prized the struggle of sport -- as much as he enjoyed skewering those who made a mockery of its principles. His encounters with Pete Rose, Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe (“Mr. Elbows…the big guy with the ginger-ale bottle shoulders”) are by turns bizarre, moving and uproarious. Richler travelled with Guy LaFleur’s Montreal Canadiens (“Les Canadiens sont là!”), but also with the “far-from-incomparable” Trail Smoke Eaters to Stockholm for the world hockey championships, where Canadians are “widely known, and widely disliked.” There are wonderful pieces here about Ring Lardner, George Plimpton, Hank Greenberg and lady umpires, and a marvellous essay on his unlimited enthusiasm for the all-inclusive Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports, which includes among its champions Sandy Koufax, “who may well be the greatest pitcher of all time, regardless of race, colour or creed,” as well as one Steve Allan Hertz, an infielder who played five total games in Houston in 1964 and had a batting average of .000.

From his first days as a poolroom hustler playing truant from Baron Byng High School at the Rachel Pool Hall, Mordecai Richler has remained a snooker devotee. In his inimitable style, he delves into the fascinating world of snooker with pith and perception. But On Snooker is not just a lifelong fan''s memoir. It is a brilliantly entertaining history of the game and an account of snooker''s bad boy champions, including Alex (The Hurricane) Higgins, Cliff (The Grinder) Thorburn—both Canadian and interviewed for this book—with a chapter devoted to their special exploits and drug escapades. There are other colourful types: Ronnie (The Rocket) O''Sullivan, whose dad ("Ron''s the name, porn''s the game") is serving a life sentence for murder. Finally there is Stephen Hendry, the greatest player ever, who has won the world championship a record seven times. Mordecai Richler also makes clear why many great writers have been fascinated by sports and why snooker and literary readers go together, including Hemingway, Shulberg, Mailer, Roth, Plimpton, Martin Amis, and others. Very funny, passionate, and thoroughly researched on snooker tables from Montreal''s The Main to Dublin, On Snooker is a book lovers of Richler and of great sports writing will cherish.

Just as Jacob Two-Two settles into his new life in Canada, things are turned upside down! First, Jacob gets a new neighbor, who does double duty as a spy; then he gets a new principal, who turns out to be mean and nasty; and then, unknowingly, he makes an enemy – but who could it be? Jacob Two-Two returns in this new adventure that takes him into the fascinating world of spycraft!

A rich collection drawn from the nearly thirty books of Mordecai Richler, featuring his writings on Montreal, New York, and London.

Duddy Kravitz wächst im jüdischen Viertel von Montreal auf, ist beliebt, gewitzt, immer zu Streichen aufgelegt. Als ihm sein Grossvater sagt, dass man ohne Grundbe-sitz ein Niemand sei, setzt Duddy nach seinem Schulabschluss alles daran, diesen Traum wahr zu machen und verstrickt sich in immer turbulentere Geschichten.

Approdato a una tarda, linguacciuta, rissosa età , Barney Panofsky impugna la penna per difendersi dall''accusa di omicidio, e da altre calunnie non meno incresciose, diffuse dal suo arcinemico Terry McIver. Così, fra quattro dita di whisky e una boccata di Montecristo, Barney ripercorre la vita allegramente dissipata e profondamente scorretta che dal quartiere ebraico di Montreal lo ha portato nella Parigi dei primi anni Cinquanta e poi di nuovo in Canada, a trasformare le idee rastrellate nella giovinezza in "sitcom" decisamente popolari e altrettanto redditizie. Annotation Supplied by Informazioni Editoriali