From Publishers Weekly A brilliant but alcoholic biographer obsesses over Solomon Gursky， the outrageously daring bootlegger grandson of legendary lecher and arctic explorer Ephraim Gursky. PW said that the author's fifth novel brims "with sardonic humor， antic imagination and bravura storytelling skill. . . . A perfect， irreverent take on all levels of Canadian society." Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information， Inc. From Library Journal After a ten-year hiatus， Richler， one of Canada's premier novelists， returns with a ribald reworking of Canadian history that chronicles the fortunes of the mythical Gursky family. (His last novel was Joshua Then and Now， LJ 5/15/80.) From patriarch Ephraim， a con man who arrived with a doomed British Arctic exploration team， through his bootlegger grandsons Bernard， Solomon， and Morrie， who parlayed prohibition into a distillery fortune， the Gurskys' penchant for grand and petty larceny is played off against upper-crust Canadian and English society， torn between greed and anti-Semitism. Moses Berger， Solomon's appropriately alcoholic biographer， assembles the pieces of Gursky history in a hilarious narrative that jumps back and forth from Victorian England to modern Montreal and all points in between. With a cast of outlandishly funny characters， Richler skewers the pretensions of the rich， the religious， and the avaricious in his best novel yet. Essential. BOMC alternate; previewed in Prepub Alert， LJ 12/89.- Andrea Caron Kempf， Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib.， Overland Park， Kan.Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information， Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.