The first of the author's three books to win the National Book Award begins with the famous opening line "I am an American, Chicago born ..." Bellow soon found a receptive audience for his new energetic style. The ciritic Irving Howe noticed the "free style" manner and called it "the first major new style in American prose fiction since those of Hemingway and Faulkner." Both Time magazine and the Modern Library board named it one of the hundred best novels in the English language.
