The Dean's December

First UK edition. 8vo. Pp. [iv], 312. Red cloth boards, lettered and ruled in gilt to spine. Grey dustwrapper, printed in black and red.

Author's ninth novel and first as Nobel laureate. A Chicago college dean on a visit to his dying mother-in-law's bedside in Ceausescu-era Bucharest, must grapple with dehumanizing bureaucracy abroad and racial controversy back home. The perfect vantage point to wrestle with "the big-scale insanities of the 20th century," a running theme through the writer's lacerating fiction. "[Bellow's] most spirited resistance to the forces of our time." –Malcolm Bradbury