The third volume of the Library of America's edition of Saul Bellow's complete novels collects three essential works: Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970), Humboldt's Gift (1975) -- and The Dean's December (1982). In each, Bellow shows himself a master of biting social commentary and bold characterization--above all through a trio of unforgettable protagonists. These novels, written in the period of Bellow's greatest literary and popular acclaim--he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976--are unsparing yet humane, and range widely in their philosophical and cultural concerns. They offer the indispensable voice of a great American raconteur and thinker.

As European capitals fell during 1940 and 1941, there swarmed to the Athene Palace, Bucharest’s Grand Hotel, diplomats, generals, Gestapo spies, and demi-mondaines from all over Europe. Arriving at the crowded Athene Palace on the day Paris fell in June 1940, American female journalist Rosa Goldschmidt Waldeck observed for the next seven months all the events that unfolded and the international figures that made Romania Europe’s last sensational hotbed of intrigue and color. Hitler’s beautiful feminine agents held court in the Athene Palace lobby within eyeshot of British diplomats, while around them moved fifth columnists, German economists, and generals, American and English diplomats and newspapermen, all who made the Athene Palace the most glamorous spot on the continent. The dramatic events of this turbulent period are described here chiefly in terms of personalities: Carol and Lupescu, Antonescu and Dr. Clodius, Nazi Gauleiters, British Quislings, Romanian appeasers, and all the types who dominated the scene of World War II Europe... On the surface, this is a fast-moving, dramatic book, as readable as a novel, but it is also a most effective dissection of the Nazi New Order. This penetrating insight into the German administration of Europe reveals the reasons underlying the failure of the Nazi regime. Originally published during the Second World War, this new edition of Athene Palace is enhanced by a thorough introductory study on the author’s life and work by Ernest H. Latham, Jr., former cultural attaché at the American Embassy in Bucharest. Dr. Latham is a well-known specialist in Romanian history and has done extensive research on American and British journalists in Romania during World War II.

Romanian exile Norman Manea’s internationally acclaimed memoir/novel, now available to English-language readers At the center of The Hooligan’s Return is the author himself, always an outcast, on a bleak lifelong journey through Nazism and communism to exile in America. But while Norman Manea’s book is in many ways a memoir, it is also a deeply imaginative work, traversing time and place, life and literature, dream and reality, past and present. Autobiographical events merge with historic elements, always connecting the individual with the collective destiny. Manea speaks of the bloodiest time of the twentieth century and of the emergence afterward of a global, competitive, and sometimes cynical modern society. Both a harrowing memoir and an ambitious epic project, The Hooligan’s Return achieves a subtle internal harmony as anxiety evolves into a delicate irony and a burlesque fantasy. Beautifully written and brilliantly conceived, this is the work of a writer with an acute understanding of the vast human potential for both evil and kindness, obedience and integrity.