{"product_id":"2026200009895-secondhand-a-theft","title":"A Theft","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eCondition: Good to fair. Paperback. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.   \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the frenetic heart of New York City, Clara Velde — a four-times-married Midwestern woman turned Manhattan success story — discovers that her most prized possession, an emerald ring gifted to her by the great love of her life, Ithiel Regler, has vanished. Saul Bellow's novella A Theft chronicles Clara's obsessive quest to recover not just the ring, but the meaning it holds — a tangible symbol of a passion never fully consummated and a life lived at full, sometimes reckless, throttle.\n\nBellow brings his signature wit and moral precision to bear on questions of desire, loss, and what we choose to treasure, rendering Clara as one of his most vivid and fully realised female protagonists. The novella is a compressed masterwork — intimate in scale yet vast in its psychological reach — that illustrates Bellow's enduring conviction that ordinary life, examined with enough ferocity, yields the profoundest truths. For readers who believe that what is stolen from us reveals more about who we are than anything we willingly surrender, this is essential reading.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49130604888283,"sku":"2026200009895-SECONDHAND","price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/04c7f1e5-608e-49ee-82b3-73a9a81d07b0.png?v=1786587392","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200009895-secondhand-a-theft","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}