The Adventures of Augie March (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) - Softcover

Originally published in 1953, Saul Bellow's modern picaresque tale grandly illustrates twentieth-century man's restless pursuit of an elusive meaning. Augie March, a young man growing up in Chicago during the Great Depression, doesn't understand success on other people's terms. Fleeing to Mexico in search of something to fill his restless soul and soothe his hunger for adventure, Augie latches on to a wild succession of occupations until his journey brings him full circle. Yet beneath Augie's carefree nature lies a reflective person with a strong sense of responsibility to both himself and others, who in the end achieves a success of his own making. A modern-day Columbus, Augie March is a man searching not for land but for self and soul and, ultimately, for his place in the world.

"A book of extraordinary and massive power ... plainly one of the richest of twentieth-century American novels." --Alfred Kazin

"[Bellow's] body of work is more capacious of imagination and language than anyone else's.... If there's a candidate for the great American novel, I think this is it." --Salman Rushdie, The Sunday Times (London)

"The best postwar American novel, The Adventures of Augie March magnificently terminates and fulfills the line of Melville, Twain, and Whitman." --James Wood, The New Republic