author
Bernard Wolfe
1915–1985
A sharp, adventurous voice in mid-20th-century American writing, he moved through politics, journalism, and satire before producing some of his best-known fiction. His work is often remembered for its wit, restless intelligence, and darkly comic view of modern life.
1 Audiobook
Self Portrait
by Bernard Wolfe
About the author
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1915, Bernard Wolfe studied at Yale and then headed to Mexico in 1937, where he worked for a time as Leon Trotsky’s secretary and bodyguard. That unusual early experience helped give his writing a worldly, skeptical edge, and over the years he also worked as a journalist, editor, and freelance writer.
Wolfe wrote across genres, but he is especially remembered for the novel Limbo (1952), a striking blend of satire and speculative fiction that earned a lasting place in science-fiction history. He also published other fiction and nonfiction, bringing the same energetic, questioning style to very different subjects.
He died in California in 1985. His papers, including correspondence and other materials from his literary life, are preserved at Yale, a reminder of a career that ranged far beyond any single book or label.