28 Facts About Mordecai Richler

Mordecai Richler's best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Barney's Version.

Mordecai Richler is well known for the Jacob Two-Two fantasy series for children.

The son of Lily and Moses Isaac Mordecai Richler, a scrap metal dealer, Mordecai Richler was born on January 27,1931, in Montreal, Quebec, and raised on St Urbain Street in that city's Mile End area.

Mordecai Richler learned English, French and Yiddish, and graduated from Baron Byng High School.

Mordecai Richler enrolled in Sir George Williams College to study but did not complete his degree.

Mordecai Richler moved to Paris at age nineteen, intent on following in the footsteps of a previous generation of literary exiles, the so-called Lost Generation of the 1920s, many of whom were from the United States.

Mordecai Richler returned to Montreal in 1952, working briefly at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, then moved to London in 1954.

Mordecai Richler published seven of his ten novels, as well as considerable journalism, while living in London.

Mordecai Richler wrote repeatedly about the Anglophone community of Montreal and especially about his former neighbourhood, portraying it in multiple novels.

In England, in 1954, Mordecai Richler married Catherine Boudreau, nine years his senior.

Mordecai Richler died of cancer on July 3,2001, in Montreal, aged 70.

Mordecai Richler was a second cousin of novelist Nancy Richler.

Mordecai Richler was often critical of Quebec but of Canadian federalism as well.

Mordecai Richler published his fourth novel, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, in 1959.

Mordecai Richler wrote of the neighbourhood and its people, chronicling the hardships and disabilities they faced as a Jewish minority.

Mordecai Richler frequently said his goal was to be an honest witness to his time and place, and to write at least one book that would be read after his death.

Mordecai Richler's work was championed by journalists Robert Fulford and Peter Gzowski, among others.

Admirers praised Mordecai Richler for daring to tell uncomfortable truths; Michael Posner's oral biography of Mordecai Richler is titled The Last Honest Man.

Mordecai Richler apologized for the incident and called it an "embarrassing gaffe".

Mordecai Richler's detractors claimed that Richler had an outdated and stereotyped view of Quebec society, and fearmongered that he risked polarizing relations between francophone and anglophone Quebecers.

Nadia Khouri believes that there was a discriminatory undertone in the reaction to Mordecai Richler, noting that some of his critics characterized him as "not one of us" or that he was not a "real Quebecer".

Mordecai Richler found that some critics had misquoted his work; for instance, in reference to the mantra of the entwined church and state coaxing females to procreate as vastly as possible, a section in which he said that Quebec women were treated like "sows" was misinterpreted to suggest that Richler thought they were sows.

Mordecai Richler has been described as "the most prominent defender of the rights of Quebec's anglophones".

Some commentators were alarmed about the strong controversy over Mordecai Richler's book, saying that it underlines and acknowledges the persistence of anti-Semitism among sections of the Quebec population.

One critic controversially claimed that Mordecai Richler had been paid by Jewish groups to write his critical essay on Quebec.

Mordecai Richler's defenders believed this was evoking old stereotypes of Jews.

About the same time, Mordecai Richler announced he had founded the "Impure Wool Society," to grant the Prix Parizeau to a distinguished non-Francophone writer of Quebec.

The council initially denied an honour to Mordecai Richler, saying it would sacrifice the heritage of their neighbourhood.