A Brooklyn grocer's life is turned upside down by an enigmatic assistant in this celebrated novel by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Fixer.The Assistant, Bernard Malamud's second novel, originally published in 1957, is the story of Morris Bober, a grocer in postwar Brooklyn, who "wants better" for himself and his family. First two robbers appear and hold him up; then things take a turn for the better when broken-nosed Frank Alpine becomes ...

Time magazine's 'All-Time list of 100 Novels'Frank Alpine, a drifter fleeing from his past, runs straight into struggling Brooklyn grocer Morris Bober. Seeing a chance to atone for past sins, Frank becomes Bober's assistant and keeps shop when the owner takes ill. But it is Bober's daughter, Helen, who gives Frank a real reason to stay around, even as he begins to steal from the store.Widely considered as one of the great American-Jewish novels,

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, ...

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...

Un umile ciabattino polacco che sogna un futuro migliore per la sua unica figlia; un pensionato che lotta disperatamente contro uno sfratto ingiusto; un sarto ebreo che ritrova la fede grazie alla visita di un angelo nero: sono alcuni dei personaggi che popolano Il barile magico, la prima raccolta di racconti di Bernard Malamud. Un'umanità marginale, offesa da esistenze troppo dure, eppure ancora irriducibilmente attaccata alle proprie speranze. Sullo sfondo, da una parte la New York prole...

The classical novel (and basis for the acclaimed film starring Robert Redford) now in a new editionIntroduction by Kevin BakerThe 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 s...

Winner of the National Book Award: "Every one of [the stories] is a small, highly individualized work of art." — The Chicago TribuneWith an introduction by Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The NamesakeBernard Malamud's first book of short stories, The Magic Barrel, has been recognized as a classic from the time it was published in 1959. The stories are set in New York and in Italy, where Malamud's alt...

William Dublin is middle-aged, a distinguished biographer seeking increased accomplishment and the key to his inner feelings. His marriage is stable if unexciting, and he lives comfortably with his wife in Vermont. Then his imagination is caught by Fanny, a young girl of twenty-three, and he is thrown into an intense, erotic love affair that threatens to destroy his measured, disciplined world and the lives of those around him.

This collection of short stories by Bernard Malamud includes:The Silver CrownMan in the DrawerThe LetterIn RetirementRembrandt's HatNotes from a Lady at a Dinner PartyMy Son the MurdererTalking Horse

Dal Barile magico, pubblicato nel 1958, un anno dopo Il commesso, e insignito del National Book Award, la produzione di racconti e la loro pubblicazione in raccolte ha accompagnato l'intera carriera di Bernard Malamud. E se il successo di pubblico e la fama di questo autentico faro della narrativa ebraico- americana restano profondamente legati a romanzi potenti e originali come L'uomo di Kiev e Le vite di Dubin, la critica e la storiografia letteraria non hanno mai avuto dubbi nel conside...

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 bo...

With a new introduction by Thomas MallonDubin'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 i...