(January 27th, 1931 — July 3rd, 2001)

Mordecai Richler was a Canadian writer. Richler wrote extensively about the Jewish community in Canada, particularly in Montréal. He is also well known for his Jacob Two-Two children’s series.

Richler was born in Montreal and lived there until the age of nineteen. He spoke English, French, and Yiddish, and had a partial education from Sir George Williams College. At nineteen, he moved to Paris.

In 1952, Richler returned to Canada for two years before moving to London, England. He stayed in London for twenty years before returning to Canada in 1972. He remained in Canada for the rest of his life. He was married twice.

He frequently contributed to journalism throughout his career as well. He wrote quite a few articles of non-fiction. Also, he wrote Oh, Canada! Oh Quebec! Requiem for a Divided Country, which discussed anti-semitism in Quebec and Quebec nationalism. This essay was very controversial at the time and remains so to this day.

In his lifetime, Richler received over twenty awards for fiction, published ten novels, three children’s novels, a short story collection, a non-fiction book, two travel memoirs, ten film scripts, and nine essay collections. He died of cancer at the age of 70.