Mordecai Richler Books in Order

Canadian painter André Bennett lives in a shabby hotel in Franco's Spain with a girlfriend who wants him to return home. A fugitive Nazi's relentless attention draws the young artist toward a dangerous confrontation during a local fiesta.

Young Noah Adler tries to escape the traditions and self-deceptions of Montreal's Jewish community. His pursuit of independence beyond its boundaries brings fresh disillusionment, forcing him to reconsider what freedom and belonging can mean.

Canadian editor Mortimer Griffin struggles to keep his bearings in the entertainment world of 1960s London. Surrounded by fashionable hypocrisy, a Hollywood magnate, and other eccentric figures, he finds his values increasingly out of step with society.

Richler brings together essays and reports first published in magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. His first nonfiction collection turns a novelist’s observant eye toward the people and cultural arguments surrounding him.

Drawing on childhood memories and short fiction, Richler revisits Montreal's St. Urbain Street. Refugees, shopkeepers, neighborhood gossip, and early lessons about adult life form a portrait of the community that shaped his imagination.

A scandalous London trial forces film director Jake Hersh to reconsider his respectable, uneventful life. His thoughts turn to his legendary cousin Joey, whose adventurous exploits embody the courage and moral certainty Jake believes he lacks.

These essays and reviews examine writers, popular culture, and Richler's own profession. Reflections on figures such as Norman Mailer sit alongside memories of Paris and the artistic ambitions and disappointments of his literary generation.

American and Canadian expatriates in London reproduce the intolerance they fled during the McCarthy era. When writer Norman Price befriends a mysterious German refugee, his colleagues turn against him, exposing the destructive side of their shared convictions.

Six-year-old Jacob Two-Two is punished for the terrible offense of insulting an adult. Imprisoned under the frightening Hooded Fang, he faces a world where being small and misunderstood can lead to an unexpectedly alarming adventure.

Richler brings together essays on popular culture, literature, and national identity, including comic strips, films, and James Bond. Selected from two earlier collections, these pieces examine entertainment and Canadian provincialism through his characteristic satire and criticism.

Successful journalist and television personality Joshua Shapiro enters a privileged world of country clubs and influential people through his marriage. Financial and sexual scandals unsettle that success, pulling his respectable present into conflict with his less polished origins.

Edited by Richler, this anthology gathers comic writing from authors including James Thurber, Woody Allen, Joseph Heller, Stephen Leacock, and Fran Lebowitz. Stories and other humorous pieces display different approaches to satire, absurdity, and everyday human folly.

Returning to Canada after twenty years abroad, Richler examines the country through personal memories and observations. Places, people, and everyday experiences become a way of considering the homeland that helped shape his writing and identity.

Jacob receives a little green lizard for his eighth birthday, only to discover that Dippy is a dinosaur. As his pet grows, unwanted official attention forces Jacob to flee the Canadian government with an increasingly difficult companion to hide.

Moses Berger becomes obsessed with the wealthy Gursky family's tangled past. Following traces of bootlegging, Arctic adventures, and business intrigue, he searches for the elusive Solomon Gursky, whose role in the family's extraordinary history remains difficult to grasp.

Inuit poet Atuk moves from Baffin Island to Toronto and becomes an unlikely literary success. Quickly adapting to the city's greed and pretensions, he abandons poetry for riskier ventures in a satire of cultural ambition and national identity.

Gathering three decades of essays, reviews, and journalism, Richler addresses literature, movies, pop psychology, and public life. His subjects range from conspiracy theories to political personalities, offering a record of his opinions across changing cultural debates.

Richler examines Quebec nationalism and the movement for independence through satire and political commentary. Language laws, economic questions, and the pressures placed on English-speaking Quebecers become central to his critique of a country divided by competing identities.

Richler recalls joining a Zionist youth movement as a schoolboy in Montreal, contrasting its promises and rituals with those of neighboring groups. Personal memory frames an exploration of Jewish belonging and the idea of a homeland in Israel.

Settling into Canada becomes complicated when Jacob gains a neighbor who is secretly a spy and a particularly unpleasant new principal. An enemy he does not recognize draws him into an adventure that introduces him to espionage.

Accused publicly of abuse, fraud, and possible murder, the thrice-married Barney Panofsky decides to write his own account. His combative memoir revisits love, family, and friendship while challenging the version of his life presented by an enemy.

Richler collects essays, reports, and opinions shaped by his combative approach to public life. His observations combine affection for friendship and ordinary pleasures with impatience toward pretension, cherished assumptions, and the absurdities he finds around him.

Richler gathers his writing on hockey, baseball, fishing, wrestling, and other sports. Encounters with celebrated players and less famous competitors reveal his admiration for athletic struggle, alongside sharp criticism of those who undermine the games he loves.

Duddy Kravitz grows up in Montreal's Jewish community determined to acquire land and become someone of importance. His schemes in filmmaking and property reveal the pressures of ambition, social status and family expectations on a young man's choices.