Mordecai Richler was shaped by the tight, supportive Montreal neighborhood where he grew up. And he, in turn, created an imaginary neighborhood about one block over from the real one, inhabited by the likes of the shameless Duddy Kravitz and the neurotic Jake Shapiro. Even when Richler left Montreal for Europe, he revisited its sights, sounds and smells in his writings over a period of some fifty years. This book brings together selections from Richler’s fiction and nonfiction that reveal his beloved native city in all its teeming variety. Illustrated with personal and archival images, Mordecai Richler Was Here is a revelation and a joy to read. MORDECAI RICHLER was one of the world’s greatest novelists. He was also a lively essayist, humorist, and critic.

ADAM GOPNIK is a staff writer with The New Yorker. As a young child in Montreal, Gopnik lived across the street from Mordecai Richler and remembers him with great affection.