The Fixer
A Novel
Bernard Malamud
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
WINNER OF THE 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.
“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
“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
“The Fixer deserves to rank alongside the great Jewish-American novels of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth.” —The Independent (London)
“A literary event in any season.” —Eliot Fremont-Smith, The New York Times
About the Author
Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) was an American novelist and short story writer celebrated for his richly moral fiction and his exploration of Jewish American life. Born in Brooklyn to Russian immigrant parents who ran a small grocery store, Malamud drew on that working-class, immigrant milieu throughout his career, even when his stories ventured into other settings and subjects.
He first gained wide acclaim with The Natural (1952), a mythic baseball novel later adapted into the popular 1984 film starring Robert Redford. His reputation was cemented with The Assistant (1957) and the story collection The Magic Barrel (1958), which won the National Book Award. In 1967, his novel The Fixer, based on the real-life case of a Jewish man falsely accused of ritual murder in czarist Russia, won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and a second National Book Award.
Alongside Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, Malamud is often regarded as one of the great voices of 20th-century Jewish American literature, known for blending realism with fable-like, allegorical touches and a deep concern with suffering, guilt, and redemption. He taught for many years at Bennington College in Vermont and continued writing until his death in 1986.