Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born American writer renowned for his literary contributions. Bellow was awarded several prestigious accolades, including the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is uniquely recognized as the only writer to have won the National Book Award for Fiction three times and was nominated six times. In 1990, he received the National Book Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

His writing, as praised by the Swedish Nobel Committee, exhibits "a mixture of rich picaresque novel and subtle analysis of our culture, entertaining adventure, alongside drastic and tragic episodes interspersed with philosophical conversation." Bellow's narrative is developed by a witty and insightful commentator, reflecting on the outer and inner dilemmas of our age.

Some of his most acclaimed works include The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Mr. Sammler's Planet, Seize the Day, Humboldt's Gift, and Ravelstein. Bellow often noted that Eugene Henderson, from Henderson the Rain King, was most reflective of his own character.

Bellow grew up in Chicago as an immigrant from Quebec. His fiction and characters often reflect his personal yearning for transcendence, described by Christopher Hitchens as a battle "to overcome not just ghetto conditions but also ghetto psychoses." His protagonists struggle with what Albert Corde, the dean in The Dean's December, referred to as "the big-scale insanities of the 20th century." This quest for transcendence is achieved through "a ferocious assimilation of learning" and an emphasis on nobility.