Mordecai: The Life and Times has been called the ‘award-winningest’ book in Canadian literary history.

I met with its author Charles Foran to talk about its subject Mordecai Richler. The guts, aggression, honesty and pride of the man - a man who did things, who wrote to stimulate conversation, and argument, who was socially engaged, who asked hard, uncomfortable questions. We also discuss Richler’s similarities to Pierre Trudeau. His taking on a whole movement over Quebec’s sign laws; his desire to write the best novel ever written, least one book that would last; about Montreal, its tensions, and his loyalty to it; and about Canadian culture, digitization and the loss of literary life.

This interview was conducted in June, 2012

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thebibliofile.substack.com/subscribe