Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud (măl´əməd), 1914–86, American author, b. New York City, grad. College of the City of New York (B.A., 1936), Columbia (M.A., 1942). His works frequently reflect a concern with Jewish tradition and the nobility of the humble man as well as with the burdens of conscience and the redemptive nature of suffering. His novel The Fixer (1966; ...

Bernard Malamud (măl´əməd), 1914–86, American author, b. New York City, grad. College of the City of New York (B.A., 1936), Columbia (M.A., 1942). His works frequently reflect a concern with Jewish tradition and the nobility of the humble man as well as with the burdens of conscience and the redemptive nature of suffering. His novel The Fixer (1966; Pulitzer Prize), set in czarist Russia, reveals the courage of a handyman falsely accused by the government of ritual murder. The Tenants (1971) describes the confrontation of two writers—one Jewish, one African American—and probes the nature of the art of writing. Among his other works are the novels The Natural (1952), A New Life (1961), Dubin's Lives (1979), and God's Grace (1982); and the short-story collections The Magic Barrel (1958), Idiots First (1963), and Rembrandt's Hat (1973), gathered together in The Collected Stories (1997).

See biography by P. Davis (2007), memoir by his daughter, J. M. Smith (2006); studies by J. Helterman (1985), J. Salzberg, ed. (1987), S. Solotaroff (1989), E. A. Abramson (1993), P. Davis (1995), and M. U. Shaw (2000).