Mr. Artur Sammler is, above all, a man who has lasted, from the civilized pleasures of English life in the 1920s and 30s through the war and death camps in Poland. Moving now through the chaotic and dangerous streets of New York’s Upper West Side, Mr. Sammler is attentive to everything, and appalled by nothing. He brings the same dispassionate curiosity to the activities of a black pickpocket on an uptown bus, the details of his niece Angela’s sex life, and his daughter’s lunacy as he does to the extraordinary theories of one Dr. V. Govinda Lal on the use we are to make of the moon now that we have reached it.
Beneath this novel’s comedy, sadness, shocking action, and superb character-drawing there runs a strain of speculation, both daring and serene, on the future of life on this planet—Mr. Sammler’s planet—and any other planets for which we may be destined.
Saul Bellow (1915–2005), author of numerous novels, novellas, and stories, was the only novelist to receive three National Book Awards. He also received the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize in Literature, the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction. During the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, Bellow served as a war correspondent for Newsday. He taught at New York University, Princeton, and the University of Minnesota and was chairman of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
George Guidall is one of the foremost narrators in the audiobook industry, having recorded over 500 unabridged books ranging from classics to contemporary bestsellers. He is the recipient of the 1999 Audie Award presented by the Audio Publishers Association for the best narration of unabridged fiction.