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List Price: $15.00Amazon.com's Price: $10.20 You Save: $4.80 (32%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780374529383
ISBN: 0374529388
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: May 05, 2004
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sales Rank: 40142
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A must read
This is a great book. You must read it. It says so much
about human nature and the power of an individual to make a difference in the world.
Rating: - Dostoyevskian darkness ... and every bit as brilliant
This is one tough novel to put down and/or not be affected by. An unfortunate irony exists between Malamud and Dostoyevsky (the latter being anti-Semitic himself), but their brilliance as writers and portrayers of the dark, the unjust and the shameful couldn't be more alike. While The Assistant remains my favorite Malamud (because, I think, I first read it very young and it had an impact on me then) The Fixer is a colossal literary achievement.
Rating:  - a surfeit of persecution
What a difficult book to read, and, I can only imagine, to write. We start with the injustice of poverty and lack of opportunity in the shtetl and move almost directly into a variety of unjust accusations leveled against Yakov Bok, who has become a scapegoat for all the imagined evil deeds of all the Jews in Russia.
Bok leaves the shtetl with hopes of a better life in Kiev. At first, things look up for him. Serendipity finds him a good job, and he is able to afford some books, and even ... Read More
Rating: - our modern selves
malamud is an excellent writer. he stoicly captures something that is undefined, but really reflects for me suburban life in jersey and nyc in the sixties (even though this is a book about russia). i liked this book for the humanity it places on the face of suffering at the hands of injustice; how despite all the beatings and deprivations, the character holds on to his essential jewishness. but the book is more than being jewish (which in many ways i am [don't tell this to my orthodox friends)), it ... Read More
Rating: - a painful account of injustice, anti-semitism and defiance
As a child I saw the film adaptation of 'The Fixer', starring Alan Bates. It must have left an impression on me since I reflexively snatched up a secondhand copy of the novel when I saw it. As with other material by Malamud, it is extremely well written. And its depiction of life in a Russian prison circa 1910 is very detailed and, unsurprisingly, horrific. But what really sets the novel apart is how it shows the triumph of the human spirit beyond even the most impossible obstacles. Thankfully ... Read More
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Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780374529383
ISBN: 0374529388
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: May 05, 2004
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Sales Rank: 40142
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux