Malamud, Bernard

Related Category: American Literature: Biographies

(măl´əməd), 1914–86, American author, b. New York City, grad. B.A., College of the City of New York, 1936, M.A., Columbia Univ., 1942. His works reflect a concern with Jewish tradition and the nobility of the humble man. 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); the short-story collections The Magic Barrel (1958), Idiots First (1963), and Rembrandt's Hat (1973), gathered together in The Collected Stories (1997).

See memoir by his daughter, J. M. Smith (2006); studies by J. Helterman (1985) and J. Salzberg, ed. (1987).