Mr. Sammler's Planet

Mr. Sammler's Planet is a 1970 novel by the American author Saul Bellow. It won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1971.
Plot synopsis
Mr. Artur Sammler, a Holocaust survivor, intellectual and occasional lecturer at Columbia University in 1960s New York City, is a "registrar of madness", a refined and civilized being caught among people crazy with the promises of the future (Moon landings, endless possibilities). "Sorry for all and sore at heart", he observes how greater luxury and leisure have only led to more human suffering.
To Mr. Sammler—who by the end of the novel has found the compassionate consciousness necessary to bridge the gap between himself and his fellow beings—a good life is one in which a person does what is "required of him". To know and to meet the "terms of the contract" was as true a life as one could live.