Herzog, novel by Saul Bellow, published in 1964. The work was awarded the National Book Award for fiction in 1965.
Moses Herzog, like many of Bellow’s heroes, is a Jewish intellectual who confronts a world peopled by sanguine, incorrigible realists. Much of the action of the novel takes place within the hero’s disturbed consciousness, including a series of flashbacks, many of which involve his sexual and marital past.
Herzog was praised for its combination of erudition and street smarts, for its lively Yiddish-influenced prose, and for its narrative drive, though some critics felt that Herzog’s wives and lovers were not fully realized.