Profundamente introspectiva y conmovedora, el premio Nobel Saul Bellow nos sorprende con una novela valiente, oscura y desoladamente divertida: una elegía a la amistad y a la vida.
Abe Ravelstein es un profesor de una eminente universidad del Oeste Medio que se vanagloria de haber enseñado a todos los que manejan la política mundial. Ha vivido de manera fastuosa, muy por encima de sus posibilidades. Su buen amigo Chick le ha sugerido que escriba un libro con sus opiniones sobre las ideas que sostienen al ser humano, o le matan, y ante la sorpresa de Ravelstein es un gran éxito que le convierte en millonario.
Durante un viaje a París para celebrar las ventas del libro, ambos compartirán sus pensamientos sobre la muerte, la filosofía y la historia , los amores y los amigos, lo viejo y lo nuevo, así como la rutina de vodevil del pasado remoto.
Reseña: «Bellow florece de nuevo… Ravelstein rebosa vida.» Time
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
Abe Ravelstein is a brilliant professor at a prominent midwestern university and a man who glories in training the movers and shakers of the political world. He has lived grandly and ferociously-and much beyond his means.
His close friend Chick has suggested that he put forth a book of his convictions about the ideas which sustain humankind, or kill it, and much to Ravelstein’s own surprise, he does and becomes a millionaire. Ravelstein suggests in turn that Chick write a memoir or a life of him, and during the course of a celebratory trip to Paris the two share thoughts on mortality, philosophy and history, loves and friends, old and new, and vaudeville routines from the remote past. The mood turns more somber once they have returned to the Midwest and Ravelstein succumbs to AIDS and Chick himself nearly dies.
Deeply insightful and always moving, Saul Bellow’s new novel is a journey through love and memory. It is brave, dark, and bleakly funny: an elegy to friendship and to lives well (or badly) lived.
