The Dean's December (Penguin Classics) - Tapa blanda

Dean Corde is a man of position and authority at a Chicago university. He accompanies his wife to Bucharest where her mother, a celebrated figure, lies dying in a state hospital. As he tries to help her grapple with an unfeeling bureaucracy, news filters through to him of problems left behind in Chicago. A student has been murdered and Corde had directed that charges be pressed against two black youths, but controversy and pressure are mounting against the university administration. Further, a series of articles Corde had written has offended powerful and influential Chicagoans whom Corde had counted on as friends. Corde is troubled: at home the centre is not holding firm, in Eastern Europe authority is cruel and dehumanizing.

Saul Bellow was born in Quebec in 1915 and moved to Chicago with his family when he was nine years old. He attended the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and has also won the Pulitzer Prize, three National Book Awards, the National Medal of Arts and the 1990 National Book Foundation Medal for distinguished contribution to American Letters.