Morley Torgov

Torgov, Morley

Morley Torgov, novelist, short story writer (b at Sault Ste Marie, Ont 3 Dec 1927). Torgov was educated at the University of Toronto (BA 1950), received his LLB from Osgoode Hall, and was called to the bar in 1954. While practising law in Toronto during the 1960s, he turned to writing. He is the author of a number of works that explore the complexities of intergenerational Jewish family life with gentle humour and insight.

His first book, A Good Place to Come From (1974), a comic memoir of growing up Jewish in Sault Ste Marie in the late 1930s and early 1940s, won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour. The Abramsky Variations (1977) is a novel that focuses on 3 generations of the Abramsky family, and in The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick (1982), which also won a Stephen Leacock Award, a young Jewish boy struggles to live up to parental expectations and feels the tension between family loyalty and the pull of ambition and independence. In St. Farb's Day (1990) he depicts with light irony the greedy Toronto of Bay Street lawyers and real estate sharks alongside the story of a man moving uncertainly into middle age. In Torgov's latest novel, The War to End All Wars(1998), 2 men who fought on different sides of the First World War find themselves competing as businessmen and suitors a decade later. He has also written short stories, articles, and plays that have been produced by the CBC, including The Builders and When We Go A-Courting.