Son of a Smaller Hero

Young Noah Adler, passionate, ruthlessly idealistic, is the prodigal son of Montreal' s Jewish ghetto. Finding tradition in league with self-delusion, he attempts to shatter the ghetto' s illusory walls by entering the foreign territory of the "goyim," But here, freedom and self-determination continue to elude him. Eventually, Noah comes to recognize " justice and safety and a kind of felicity" in a world he cannot - entirely - leave behind. Richler' s superb account of Noah' s struggle to scale the walls of the ghetto overflows with rich comic satire. "Son of a Smaller Hero" is a compassionate, penetrating account of the nature of belonging, told with the savage realism for which Mordecai Richler' s fiction is celebrated.