The Magic Barrel

bernard malamud jhumpa lahiri

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction

Bernard Malamud's first book of short stories, The Magic Barrel, has been recognized as a classic from the time it was published in 1959. The stories are set in New York and in Italy (where Malamud's alter ego, the struggling New York Jewish painter, Arthur Fidelman, roams amid the ruins of old Europe in search of his artistic patrimony); they tell of egg candlers and shoemakers, matchmakers, and rabbis, in a voice that blends vigorous urban realism, Yiddish idiom, and a dash of artistic magic.

The Magic Barrel is a book about New York and about the immigrant experience, and it is high point in the modern American short story. Few books of any kind have managed to depict struggle and frustration and heartbreak with such delight, or such artistry.

Genres short storiesfictionclassicsjewishliteraturethe united states of americaamericanaudiobookliterary fictionitaly

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1950

Literary awards

national book award,

This edition

Format: 240 pages, Paperback
Published: July 7, 2003 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 9780374525866
ASIN: 0374525862
Language: English

Characters More characters

Arthur Fidelman

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About the author

bernard malamud

Bernard Malamud was an American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford. His 1966 novel The Fixer (also filmed), about antisemitism in the Russian Empire, won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.