Posted on June 21, 2006 by Nancy Callahan

Mr. Sammler’s Planet by Saul Bellow was a very good book. Perhaps not as good as Augie March or Herzog, but definitely worth a read.

It features Artur Sammler, a 70-something year-old Holocaust survivor and keen observer of people and things in his adopted home of NYC. The people around him (Shula, Angela, Wallace, etc.) add lovely touches of absurdity to counterpoint Sammler’s incisive historical and social commentary. Sammler does ramble a bit, but that seemed very forgivable to me (though not to some other reviewers I’ve seen).

Bellow reminds me of the famous ‘philosophical’ Russian novelists. So, if you have a thing for the likes of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, don’t miss Saul Bellow.