Awards
1967 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
1967 National Book Award for Fiction
Synopses & Reviews
A classic that won Malamud both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book AwardThe Fixer (1966) is Bernard Malamud's best-known and most acclaimed novel -- one that makes manifest his roots in Russian fiction, especially that of Isaac Babel.
Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit.
Bernard Malamud (1914-1986) published eight novels, including The Fixer, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. The Magic Barrel, a collection of short stories, also won the National Book Award. Born in Brooklyn, Malamud was a beloved teacher for many years at Bennington College in Vermont.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award
The Fixer (1966) is Bernard Malamud's best-known and most acclaimed novel, and one that makes manifest his roots in Russian fiction, especially that of Isaac Babel.
Set in Tsarist Russia during a period of virulent anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. At the outset, Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, he finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found dead in a cave, drained of nearly all his blood, the Jews are accused of ritual murder. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit. Malamud said of the book: "Whatever else it had to be about, it had to be about how the idea of freedom grows in the mind of a man subjected to a grave injustice." The Fixer dramatizes a particular kind of injustice, and the result is a masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction. "When I finished reading this novel, I felt castigated and inspired. Grumbling about the state of the world suddenly wasn't enough. And excusing myself from political activity felt wrong. In light of this book, my inaction felt immoral. While The Fixer isn't a book about morality, it is a moral book. That is, rather than offering a flimsy directive, it presents the reader with a forceful question: Why aren't you doing anything."Jonathan Safran Foer, from the Introduction
"A literary event in any season."Eliot Fremont-Smith, The New York Times
"Brilliant [and] harrowing . . . Historical reality combined with fictional skill and beauty of a high order make [it] a novel of startling importance."Elizabeth Hardwick
"The Fixer deserves to rank alongside the great Jewish-American novels of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth."The Independent (London)
Review
"One of Malamud's extraordinary gifts has always been for lifting the realistic world one level up, into the realm of metaphysical fantasy. Another has been to take life, lives, seriously." Malcolm Bradbury
Review
"The Fixer deserves to rank alongside the Great Jewish-American novels of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth." Independent
Review
"Brilliant [and] harrowing....Historical reality combined with fictional skill and beauty of a high order make [it] a novel of startling importance." Elizabeth Hardwick, Vogue
Review
"What makes it a great book, above and beyond its glowing goodness, has to do with something else altogether: its necessity....This novel, like all great novels reminds us that we must do something." Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated
Review
"A literary event in any season." Eliot Fremont-Smith, The New York Times
Synopsis
A classic that won Malamud both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award
The Fixer (1966) is Bernard Malamud's best-known and most acclaimed novel one that makes manifest his roots in Russian fiction, especially that of Isaac Babel.
Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit.
Synopsis
Kiev in 1911, between the 1905 revolution and the overthrow of Russia's last Tsar, is 'a medieval city full of wild superstition and mysticism' and a cauldron of anti-Semitism. When a twelve-year-old Russian boy is found stabbed to death, his body drained of blood, the Jews are accused of ritual child murder.
Yakov Blok, a handyman (or 'fixer'), is blamed and then arrested and imprisoned without indictment. As the accusations against him mutate and multiply and public involvement intensifies his suffering, acquittal comes to seem as terrifying as conviction.
Published in 1966, The Fixer won Bernard Malamud both the Pulitzer Prize and his second National Book Award.
Synopsis
The Fixer is the winner of the 1967 National Book Award for Fiction and the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.The Fixer (1966) is Bernard Malamud's best-known and most acclaimed novel -- one that makes manifest his roots in Russian fiction, especially that of Isaac Babel.
Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit.
About the Author
Bernard Malamud (1914 - 1986) wrote eight novels; he won the Pulizer Prize and the National Book Award for
The Fixer, and the National Book Award for
The Magic Barrel, a book of stories. Born in Brooklyn, he taught for many years at Bennington College in Vermont.