Bernard Malamud was born on April 26,
Maladmud is most renowned for his short stories, oblique allegories often set in a dreamlike urban ghetto of immigrant Jews. His prose, like his settings, is an artful parody of Yiddish-English locutions, punctuated by sudden lyricism.
Malamud’s first novel The Natural, published in 1952, is about a superhumanly baseball player who goes on an exploration of the Grail myth. Later the novel was made into a movie starring Robert Redford. The Magic Barrel (1958) won a National Book Award and established him as one of the best short-story writers. The Fixer, his best-known novel, won the National Book Award in 1966 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Among his other novels were The Assistant (1957), set in a Jewish grocer in
Malamud´s works include:
• The Natural (1952)
• The Assistant (1957)
• The Magic Barrel (1958)
• A New Life (1961)
• Idiots First (1963)
• The Fixer (1966)
• Pictures of Fidelman (1969)
• The Tenants (1971)
• Rembrandt´s Hat (1974)
• Dubin´s Lives (1979)
• God´s Grace (1982)
• The Stories of Bernard Malamud (1983)
• The People and Uncollected Stories (1989)
• The Complete Stories (1997)
• The Mourners
Malamud died on March 18, 1986. His daughter, Janna Malamud Smith, relates her memories of her father in her memoir, My Father is a Book.