CNN.com - Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler dies

QUEBEC CITY, Quebec (Reuters) -- Mordecai Richler, one of Canada's most respected and controversial writers, died overnight after a long battle with cancer, his publisher Random House said on Tuesday.

Richler, who was 70, was the author of more than 10 books including "Barney's Version" and "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz." He underwent chemotherapy last week to fight cancer, for the second time in three years. Doctors said the cancer had spread to his remaining kidney. He lost a kidney to cancer in 1998.

Richler's publisher Doug Gibson, president of McClelland and Stewart, praised the Quebec-based novelist of Jewish descent.

"I think most people would be astonished when they're told that 'Duddy Kravitz' came out in 1959. It's a long time ago and he's been producing major works since then, up to and including 'Barney's Version' in 1997," Gibson told CBC Television.

"Mordecai was such a gigantic figure that I think all of us are shaken today."

Richler, one of Canada's literary icons, won two Governor-General Awards in Canada, as well as the Giller Prize, Canada's most lucrative award for fiction. He was twice short-listed for the Booker Prize, one of the world's premier literary awards. He also wrote children's fiction.

Born in Montreal, Richler won international acclaim for his images of life in the cosmopolitan city of 3.5 million people. He was popular in Britain, where he was a frequent visitor and a part-time resident.

Richler was particularly angered by Montreal's decline as an economic and social power in Canada, and the exodus of many of its English-speaking residents. He had a tough childhood in the city's Jewish ghetto, where he became a voracious reader and dreamed of becoming a writer. He left Canada for post-war Europe as a young man before returning to live in Quebec.

Richler published several novels while still in his 20s but he said it was not until his fourth, "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz," that he found his voice. The acclaimed work was the first he had written about the world he knew best, Montreal's Jewish community.

After living in England for almost 20 years, Richler returned to Canada with his family in 1972. Since then his reputation as a novelist has grown. He has also earned attention abroad for his essays in British and U.S. magazines including The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.

Highly controversial

It was an essay for The New Yorker that later became the book "Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!" that sparked some of the greatest controversy to surround Richler. The essay examined Quebec's separatist movement and its links with anti-Semitism in the province earlier this century. The essay and book enraged separatist politicians in the predominantly French-speaking province.

Richler long opposed the province's tough language laws mandating the use of French on commercial signs and made these views clear in his writing.

"I've never tried to ingratiate myself with anybody. I write as I believe and, as I'm very critical of a lot of things, I'm fair game myself. So we'll just see how it goes. Nobody owes me anything," Richler told a 1998 Reuters interview.

His accomplishments aside, Richler was well known in Canada for his irascible humor, fondness for drink and ferocious criticism of politics. In a country whose citizens are known for politeness and deferral to authority, Richler was a maverick.

"I think Mordecai would relish being called 'prickly' and 'rumpled.' I think you're going to hear both of these adjectives a lot because he took pleasure in not being a yes-man. He was always on the lookout for pomposity, and he let you know if he thought you were being pompous ... he was a very honorable guy," publisher Gibson said.

Richler said he always considered Quebec his home. He and his wife resided most of the year in Austin, a hamlet in the picturesque Eastern Townships region east of Montreal. They spent the rest of their time in London, where several of their children live.

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