Mordecai Richler (January 27, 1931 - July 3, 2001) was a Canadian writer, best known for his stories of Montreal-born Jewish characters, often contrary, argumentative, and morally ambiguous. Although he's primarily remembered as one of Canada's literary bright lights, turning out books like Solomon Gursky Was Here and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, he also wrote children's books like the Jacob Two-Two stories, essays and journalism giving his often crabby views on everything from Israel to Quebec, and even a book about pool. Several of his books have been turned into films, most recently Barney's Version.
Tropes often appearing in Richler's works:
- Author Avatar: All over the place.
- Canon Welding: Quite a few of his characters show up in multiple novels.
- Creator Provincialism: All his books are set, at least in part, in Montreal, where he himself was born and raised, and among the city’s Anglophone Jewish community, of which he was a member.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Several of his main characters. Barney Panofsky, title character of Barney's Version, features a crabby man who secretly pays to have faked Bulgarian tabloid news clips sent to an actress on the soap opera he produces so that she feels she is popular.
- N-Word Privileges: His Jewish characters can often be greedy, venal, and generally nasty, even though Richler himself was Jewish.
- Take That!: And how!
