The Fixer cover art

The Fixer

A Novel

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About this listen

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.

©1966 Bernard Malamud, renewed 1994 by Ann D. Malamud (P)2017 Audible, Inc. Classics Jewish World Literature Crime Middle East Murder Russia
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It functions more as a testimony than a novel. The characters are functional to the argument.

Interesting but without emotions

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I think Bernard wrote some really huge novels which are even today no dated crap. I have read 'The Fixer' back in the 80's when I was a kid in a briliant Hungarian translation. And you know what? This original version simply does not work for me. It's like a not bad Russian novel translated by a mediocre American high school teacher. The major irritation has been caused by its vocabulary. Like an ambitious first novel which desperately needs loads of editing. I don't recall what has been so appealing in it back in 1985. I am sorry.
If you want to know the real Malamud, read instead 'The Assistant' or 'A New Life' and please the incredible audio version of his complete stories released by Audible Studios. As fresh as today's peach.

Worse than all the rest

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