In addition to his fiction, Richler wrote numerous essays about the Jewish community in Canada, and about Canadian and Quebec nationalism.

Richler enrolled in Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) to study but did not complete his degree.

Years later, Richler's mother published an autobiography, The Errand Runner: Memoirs of a Rabbi's Daughter (1981), which discusses Mordecai's birth and upbringing, and the sometimes difficult relationship between them.

[6] Throughout his career, Richler wrote journalistic commentary, and contributed to The Atlantic Monthly, Look, The New Yorker, The American Spectator, and other magazines.

The book featured a frequent Richler theme: Jewish life in the 1930s and 40s in the neighbourhood of Montreal east of Mount Royal Park on and about St. Urbain Street and Saint Laurent Boulevard (known colloquially as "The Main").

An endless repetition of precious peeling balconies and waste lots making the occasional gap here and there.Following the publication of Duddy Kravitz, according to The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, Richler became "one of the foremost writers of his generation".

Richler frequently said his goal was to be an honest witness to his time and place, and to write at least one book that would be read after his death.

[8] Richler's ambivalent attitude toward Montreal's Jewish community was captured in Mordecai and Me (2003), a book by Joel Yanofsky.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz has been performed on film and in several live theatre productions in Canada and the United States.

In articles published between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s, Richler criticized Quebec's restrictive language laws and the rise of sovereigntism.

In it, he claimed the PQ had borrowed the Hitler Youth song "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" from Cabaret for their anthem "À partir d'aujourd'hui, demain nous appartient",[12][13] though he later acknowledged his error on the song, blaming himself for having "cribbed" the information from an article by Irwin Cotler and Ruth Wisse published in the American magazine Commentary.

[18] Nadia Khouri believes that there was a discriminatory undertone in the reaction to Richler, noting that some of his critics characterized him as "not one of us"[19] or that he was not a "real Quebecer".

[21] Québécois writers who thought critics had overreacted included Jean-Hugues Roy, Étienne Gignac, Serge-Henri Vicière, and Dorval Brunelle.

[23] Some commentators were alarmed about the strong controversy over Richler's book, saying that it underlines and acknowledges the persistence of anti-Semitism among sections of the Quebec population.

[24] Richler received death threats;[25] an anti-Semitic Francophone journalist yelled at one of his sons, "[I]f your father was here, I'd make him relive the Holocaust right now!"

[27] About the same time, Richler announced he had founded the "Impure Wool Society," to grant the Prix Parizeau to a distinguished non-Francophone writer of Quebec.

The prize (with an award of $3000) was granted twice: to Benet Davetian in 1996 for The Seventh Circle, and David Manicom in 1997 for Ice in Dark Water.