Ravelstein

First edition. 8vo. Pp. [vi], 233, [1 (blank)]. Quarter-bound brown cloth over beige paper-covered boards, lettered in gilt to spine; deckled fore-edge. Jacket photograph by Richard Dunkley (priced $24.95 to front flap).

Remaindered mark to textblock, else Fine.

Nobel laureate's final full-length novel, published in his eighty-fifth year. A roman à clef in the guise of a memoir, whose eponymous subject is a thinly disguised rendition of Bellow's boon companion, the late Allan Bloom.

Like Bloom, Ravelstein teaches at the University of Chicago, fighting a rear-guard action against the creeping vulgarity and commercialization of American public life. What's more, he has written a surprise bestseller (a ringer for The Closing of the American Mind), which has made him into an overnight millionaire. And finally, like Bloom, he is dying of AIDS. Accusations of betrayal of Bloom's private life were parried by Bellow, citing conversations à deux where Bloom urged his friend to tell all.

"[A] masterpiece with no analogues." –Martin Amis