The Bellarosa Connection

Saul Bellow's very short novella is about a filthy-rich man known as "Mr. Mnemosyne," a memory specialist who is the head of a mnemonics group--and the novel's narrator. As he dredges up from his memory the story of Harry Fonstein, a Jewish refugee who escaped the Nazis, the narrator--an American-born Jew--surveys his own life as well, trying to understand what made him who he is. In the process he must come to terms with the guilt he feels for his fabulous success--as opposed to the monumental suffering of the generation that came before him.