BOSTON (Reuters) - Saul Bellow, who rose from writing book reviews for $10 apiece to become one of America's greatest novelists after World War II, passed away on Tuesday at age 89.
Friend and lawyer Walter Pozen said Bellow died of natural causes at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife by his side.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize, and three National Book Awards, Bellow was the author of such novels as "The Adventures of Augie March," "Herzog," and "Henderson the Rain King."
His work touched on the essence of human existence, the experience of immigrants and Jews, and class and social mobility in 20th century America.
"Saul Bellow was not only a great writer, he was also a superb teacher and friend -- a whole and marvelous man," said Boston University President Emeritus John Silber, who helped recruit the author to the school in 1993.
Born in 1915 in Canada to Russian immigrants, the young Bellow moved with his family to Chicago, the city with which his work would become most closely associated.
Bellow's mother wanted her son to be a Talmudic scholar, and he could read Hebrew before he entered kindergarten, but young Bellow always knew he wanted to be a writer.
"From my earliest days I had a conviction that I was here to write certain things and so from the age of 13, I kept working at that," he told Britain's Guardian newspaper in 1997.
Picked by The Embalmer.