Writer Saul Bellow dies at the age of 89

Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, a master of comic melancholy who in many novels both championed and mourned the soul’s fate in the modern world, has died aged 89. Bellow was the most acclaimed of a generation of Jewish writers who emerged after the Second World War, among them Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick. "The backbone of 20th-century American literature has been provided by two novelists – William Faulkner and Saul Bellow," Roth said yesterday. "Together they are the Melville, Hawthorne, and Twain of the 20th century." Bellow was the first writer to win the National Book Award three times: in 1954 for "The Adventures of Augie March", in 1965 for "Herzog" and in 1971 for "Mr Sammler’s Planet". In 1976, he won the Pulitzer Prize for "Humboldt’s Gift". That same year Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his "human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture".