Most Popular Books by Bernard Malamud

A collection of thirteen short fiction stories, set in New York and Italy, by twentieth-century American author Bernard Malamud.

Compassionate and profound in their wry humor, this collection of stories captures the poetry of human relationships at the point where reality and imagination meet.

The classical novel (and basis for the acclaimed film starring Robert Redford) now in a new edition Introduction by Kevin Baker The Natural, Bernard Malamud''s first novel, published in 1952, is also the first—and some would say still the best—novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material—the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era—and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. Four decades later, Alfred Kazin''s comment still holds true: "Malamud has done something which—now that he has done it!—looks as if we have been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology."

Bearded 30-year-old with a burdensome past comes to a small town in the Pacific Northwest to live a new life as a college professor.

God''s Grace (1982), Bernard Malamud''s last novel, is a modern-day dystopian fantasy, set in a time after a thermonuclear war prompts a second flood -- a radical departure from Malamud''s previous fiction. The novel''s protagonist is paleolosist Calvin Cohn, who had been attending to his work at the bottom of the ocean when the Devastation struck, and who alone survived. This rabbi''s son -- a "marginal error" -- finds himself shipwrecked with an experimental chimpanzee capable of speech, to whom he gives the name Buz. Soon other creatures appear on their island-baboons, chimps, five apes, and a lone gorilla. Cohn works hard to make it possible for God to love His creation again, and his hopes increase as he encounters the unknown and the unforeseen in this strange new world. With God''s Grace, Malamud took a great risk, and it paid off. The novel''s fresh and pervasive humor, narrative ingenuity, and tragic sense of the human condition make it one of Malamud''s most extraordinary books. "Is he an American Master? Of course. He not only wrote in the American language, he augmented it with fresh plasticity, he shaped our English into startling new configurations." --Cynthia Ozick

In Tsarist Russia, Yakov is accused of a ritual murder he did not commit.

Short stories and a scene from a play.

-- Publisher''s Weekly

With a new introduction by Aleksandar Hemon In The Tenants (1971), Bernard Malamud brought his unerring sense of modern urban life to bear on the conflict between blacks and Jews then inflaming his native Brooklyn. The sole tenant in a rundown tenement, Henry Lesser is struggling to finish a novel, but his solitary pursuit of the sublime grows complicated when Willie Spearmint, a black writer ambivalent toward Jews, moves into the building. Henry and Willie are artistic rivals and unwilling neighbors, and their uneasy peace is disturbed by the presence of Willie''s white girlfriend Irene and the landlord Levenspiel''s attempts to evict both men and demolish the building. This novel''s conflict, current then, is perennial now; it reveals the slippery nature of the human condition, and the human capacity for violence and undoing.

A compassionate and wry commedia exploring the secret self, the obsessions of biography and love With a new introduction by Thomas Mallon, Dubin''s Lives (1979) is a rich, subtle book and a moving tale of love and marriage. Its protagonist, prize-winning biographer William Dubin, learns from the lives he writes about and shares, as well as his own. In his later middle age, he seeks his secret self, and the obsession of biography is supplanted by the obsession of love for a woman half his age who has sought understanding of her life through his books. Praised by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times as Malamud''s "best novel since The Assistant—possibly, it is the best he has written of all," Dubin''s Lives is a must-read for fans of literary fiction, novels about writers, and Jewish literature. This compelling work from one of America''s finest authors offers a thoughtful exploration of the complexities of marriage and adultery.

"During his teaching career, Bernard Malamud taught both creative writing and literature courses and indicated that he almost never taught his own works, since ''an author cannot dictate the total meaning of his work to a classroom.'' He was consistently reluctant in interviews as well to ''explain his fiction.'' He valued ''imaginative interpretations... whether I agree with them or not.'' He rejected the notion that there was a correct interpretation of his work." --

This collection of short stories by Bernard Malamud includes: The Silver Crown Man in the Drawer The Letter In Retirement Rembrandt''s Hat Notes from a Lady at a Dinner Party My Son the Murderer Talking Horse

Six memorable episodes in the life of a man trying to achieve fulfillment as an artist.

S. Levin, timido insegnante di letteratura, si trasferisce in un piccolo college della remota provincia americana per sfuggire al caos di New York e a un passato di alcolismo e di sbando. Tra i boschi del selvaggio Oregon spera di trovare una nuova dimensione esistenziale, un nuovo impulso alla propria realizzazione umana e professionale, qualche soddisfazione lavorativa e magari anche l''amore; invece si ritrova in un ambiente ristretto e conformista, refrattario alle novità e diviso da antagonismi meschini. Né le cose vanno meglio per quanto riguarda la vita sentimentale: unico scapolo in una comunità di coppie sposate, il povero Levin si imbarca in una serie di relazioni scriteriate più vicine alla tragicommedia che al romanticismo, finché...

Pubblicato negli Stati Uniti nel 1957, Il commesso è considerato da molti il capolavoro di Bernard Malamud. La storia è quella di Morris Bober, umile commerciante ebreo che nel cuore di Manhattan conduce una vita misera e consumata dagli anni, e di Frank Alpine, un ladruncolo di origini italiane, deciso a riscattarsi e diventare un uomo onesto e degno di stima, aiutando Morris al negozio. Tuttavia il giovane Frank non resisterebbe dietro al bancone, sempre più assediato dalla concorrenza, se non si innamorasse di Helen, la figlia di Morris. La vicenda è straordinariamente intrecciata intorno alle emozioni, ai segreti, al destino di queste tre esistenze. Il ritmo quasi ipnotico della narrazione, la capacità di attenzione al dettaglio, lo stile limpido e ironico regalano al romanzo quell''atmosfera inconfondibile, a metà fra il tragico e il comico, che rende affascinante la narrativa di Malamud. Con una prefazione inedita di Marco Missiroli.

Bernard Malamud erzählt in diesem Roman die Geschichte eines Mannes, der einem verfehlten Leben in seiner Heimatstadt New York entrinnen will und sich als Dozent für Englisch an einem College in einer Kleinstadt im Westen bewirbt. Seymour Levin erhält die Stelle. Er durchquert den amerikanischen Kontinent und zieht mit hochgespannten Erwartungen dem neuen Leben entgegen. Aber in dem einen Jahr, das er am Cascadia-College verbringt, entdeckt er, daß diese Welt, gemessen an seinen moralischen Einsichten, für die er leben will, anfechtbar und unvollkommen ist und daß auch er selbst anfällig ist und sich abermals in Schuld und Irrtum verstricken kann.

Der Held in Bernard Malamuds Roman ist der letzte Bewohner eines abbruchreifen New Yorker Mietshauses. Dem jüdischen Schriftsteller Harry Lesser sitzt die Zeit im Nacken – und Levenspiel, sein Hauswirt. Lesser schreibt seit Jahren an einem neuen Buch und quält sich seit Monaten mit dem Ende ab. Hartnäckig weigert er sich auszuziehen, und man kann ihn nicht hinauswerfen, weil er unter Mieterschutz steht. Levenspiel, der das alte Haus niederreißen und ein neues bauen will, das mehr Einnahmen verspricht, drängt, beschwört, droht jeden Tag, bietet Geld an als Abfindung. Vergeblich. Lesser läßt sich nicht erweichen. Kein Umzug soll ihn dabei stören, sein Werk zu beenden. Doch etwas anderes dringt störend, ablenkend und beunruhigend in sein monotones Leben ein. Es beginnt mit dem Klappern einer Schreibmaschine, einer fremden Schreibmaschine, irgendwo im Haus.

Riproposto finalmente oggi, a trentanni dalla sua prima pubblicazione nel 1979, questo romanzo è considerato uno dei migliori usciti dalla penna di Bernard Malamud. È la storia di William Dubin, biografo di mezza età, che vive una vita tranquilla insieme alla moglie in un piccolo centro di campagna dello stato di New York, studiando e raccontando le vite altrui nel tentativo, forse, di capire meglio la propria. Durante la stesura di una monografìa sullo «scandaloso» D.H. Lawrence, però, il suo mondo viene scosso dall''incontro con Fanny, una sua ammiratrice di trent''anni più giovane, vivace e disinibita. I due cominciano un''improbabile relazione adulterina che si snoderà, fra alti e bassi e in maniera spesso surreale, quasi sotto gli occhi della legittima moglie di Dubin, una donna al tempo stesso fragile e incrollabile. Dal corto circuito fra queste tre personalità Malamud, maestro dell''ironia e dell''affabulazione, crea una gustosissima commedia psicologica sulla natura enigmatica e contraddittoria delle nostre esistenze.