“I am an American, Chicago born - Chicago, that somber city - and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way.” The opening words of The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow's masterpiece of 1953, are emblematic of his own life and character.

Bellow, who rose from writing book reviews for $10 apiece to be perhaps the greatest American novelist since the second world war, died on Tuesday at home in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was 89.