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.

A collection of short stories by the twentieth century American author.

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."

Sy Levin, a high school teacher beset by alcohol and bad decisions, leaves New York for the Pacific Northwest to start over, imagining that an extraordinary new life awaits him there. Soon after arriving, he realizes that he had fallen for the myth of the West as a place of personal reinvention.

-- Publisher''s Weekly

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

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

Short stories and a scene from a play.

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.

With a new introduction by Thomas Mallon Dubin''s Lives (1979) is a compassionate and wry commedia, a book 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." Its protagonist is one of Malamud''s finest characters; prize-winning biographer William Dubin, who learns from lives, or thinks he does: those he writes, those he shares, the life he lives. Now in his later middle age, he seeks his own secret self, and the obsession of biography is supplanted by the obsession of love--love for a woman half is age, who has sought an understanding of her life through his books. Dubin''s Lives is a rich, subtle book, as well as a moving tale of love and marriage.

When Rembrandt the bear loses his special lucky hat, he finds that neither a bird nor a clown hat can replace it.

"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." --

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

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.

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.