Many years ago in Moscow, I interpreted for a visiting stage director from Calgary. At the end of her visit she gave me a present, a book titled Cocksure, by Mordecai Richler—“a Canadian writer,” she added importantly.

I will confess right off the bat that, starting with Cocksure (1968), Mr. Richler has been one of my favorites through the years. His Canadian-ness has only added to his appeal: American literature seems like an adopted home to me, while Canada is still an exotic place.

Mr. Richler has often dealt with Canadian-ness in his work.

Mr. Richler has often dealt with Canadian-ness in his work. For him, a sense of national pride is always leavened with a bit of cultural inferiority complex. I can think of no other Canadian writer who is so mordant on the subject. Jake Hersh, the hero of St. Urbain’s Horseman (1971), tells a story of “a New York publisher who amused himself by drawing up a list of ten books for a new firm that was bound to fail. Leading the list of unreadables was a book titled Canada, Our Good Neighbor to the North.”

Mr. Richler does not abandon the subject in his latest book, Solomon Gursky Was Here. The hero, Moses Berger, recalls his father’s friends gathering at the Bergers’: “For them, Canada was not yet a country but the next-door place. They were still this side of Jordan, in the land of Moab . .