Barney's Version (Penguin Modern Classics)

Ebullient and perverse, thrice-married Barney Panofsky believes in only two things: life is absurd and nobody truly ever understands anybody else. But when his sworn enemy publicly accuses Barney of being a wife abuser, an intellectual fraud, and probably a murderer, he is driven to write his own memoir to set the record straight. Charged with comic energy and a wicked disregard for any pieties whatsoever, Barney's Version is a brilliant portrait of a man whom Mordecai Richler has made uniquely memorable for all time.