7.6 /10 1 Votes
Cover artist Harold Town Publication date 1971 Originally published 1971 Preceded by Cocksure Genres Fiction, Novel | 3.8/5 Goodreads Country Canada Media type Print Followed by Joshua Then and Now | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pages 462 pages (first edition) Publishers McClelland & Stewart (Canada), Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK), Alfred A. Knopf (US) Similar Mordecai Richler books, Governor General's Award for English-language fiction winners, Novels | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
St. Urbain's Horseman is the seventh novel by Canadian author Mordecai Richler. It was first published in 1971 by McClelland & Stewart. It is one of Richler's most ambitious novels and won the prestigious Governor General's Award for 1971.
Plot and setting
The novel is set in London and Montreal during the late 1960s. The protagonist, Jake Hersh, first appeared in Richler's fourth novel, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, as a schoolmate of the title character. Now, almost twenty years later, Hersh is a moderately successful film director, married with three children, who has become embroiled in a sordid sex scandal. With his world crumbling around him, Jake continues to be obsessed with the mystery of his long-lost cousin and idol Joey, an adventurer, Nazi-hunter and Spanish Civil War veteran.