The Dean's December is a 1982 novel by the American author Saul Bellow.

Set in Chicago and Bucharest, the book's main character, Albert Corde, a meditative academic who faces a crisis, accompanies his Romanian-born astrophysicist wife to her Communist-ruled native country, where they deal with the death of his mother-in-law.

This sojourn allows Corde to observe the workings of a totalitarian regime in particular and the Eastern Bloc in general, a perspective which provides him with insight into the human condition.

In The New York Times Book Review, critic Robert Towers concluded, "The Dean's December confirms me in the opinion I have held since, nearly 30 years ago, I read The Adventures of Augie March (having, as an impecunious instructor, paid out hard cash for my hardcover copy just off the press): Sentence by sentence, page by page, Saul Bellow is simply the best writer that we have.

"Let me say plainly that The Dean's December is a bad piece of work: a dull book and a false one.