The Dean's December

In Saul Bellow's profound novel, "The Dean's December," Professor Albert Corde, a dean at a Chicago journalism faculty, finds his world crumbling. Having publicly condemned his city's pervasive corruption and drawn controversy in a high-profile murder trial involving two Black men and a white student, Corde is ostracized, labeled a racist and a traitor. Forced to leave Chicago under a cloud of outrage, he travels to communist Bucharest to attend to his dying mother-in-law. There, amidst the oppressive atmosphere of the Eastern Bloc, Corde grapples with the striking and unsettling parallels between the dehumanizing aspects of the communist regime and the moral decay he perceives in his abandoned American city. As he reflects on the spiritual and societal costs of both worlds, besieged by personal grief and public condemnation, Corde confronts a deep sense of defeat, his humanity tested by forces threatening to drag him into profound desolation. The novel is a stark meditation on conscience, responsibility, and the search for truth in a complex, corrupt world.