Mordecai Richler

Mordecai Richler, CC (January 27, 1931 – July 3, 2001) was a Canadian writer. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Barney's Version (1997). His 1989 novel Solomon Gursky Was Here was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He is also well known for the Jacob Two-Two children's fantasy series. In addition to his fiction, Richler wrote numerous essays about the Jewish community in Canada, and about Canadian and Quebec nationalism. Arriving as immigrants in Canada when English was the country's predominant official language, the Jewish communities in Montreal (a city in the largely and officially francophone province of Quebec) usually acquired English, not French, as a second language after Yiddish. This later put them at odds with the Quebec nationalist movement, which argued for French as the province's only official language. Richler's Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! (1992), a collection of essays about nationalism and anti-Semitism, generated considerable controversy.