kitabın ilk sayfasından en sonuna kadar bitmek bilmeyen bir psikolojik gerilim...hem heyecan verici hem merak uyandırıcı olduğu için elimden bırakamadım. ama bir o kadar da öfkelendim, üzüldüm, stres yaşadım. yazar haksız yere mahkum edilip, bir hücrede hiçbir şey yapmadan geçirdiği yılları o kadar sürükleyici anlatmış ki, başarısına şapka çıkarmamak elde değil.

E� un romanzo bellissimo, anche se apparentemente diverso dagli altri libri di Malamud, un po� per l�ambientazione, un po� per il luogo cos� soffocante e angusto in cui si svolge, quasi kafkiano. Ma � sempre quel senso di sconfitta che per� non cela la dignit� umana a essere narrato. Pur nella profonda tristezza, infatti, nell�ingiustizia, nell�oppressione, l�Uomo non risulta annichilito n� perde se stesso, come invece sappiamo avviene in queste circostanze, grazie a Primo Levi o Boris Pahor. Rimane dunque la speranza, perch� non c�� libert� dove non c�� la lotta per la libert�. Nello spazio angusto di una cella si rievocano i fantasmi del Novecento, i pregiudizi, i razzismi e dentro la cella vola il pensiero che non si spegne mai, ma che sogna la primavera, la bellezza, la vita.

I have no idea how to rate this book. I think the writing is fantastic, but the contents are really dark and depressing.

Bana Dreyfus Davası’nı hatırlatan bir kitap oldu ki kitabın sonlarına doğru değinildi de bu benzerliğe…
Haksız yere suçlanan ve hapse atılan bir yahudinin yaşadıklarını okuduğumuz bu kitabın gücü, çekilen sefalet ve haksızlığı çok uzun sayfalar boyunca okumamıza rağmen akıcılığından hiçbir şey kaybetmemesi ve sıkmaması bence. Ben çok beğendim

After reading Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium, which is in large part about the horrid pogroms unleashed on Europe's Jews in the Middle Ages, I thought The Fixer would be a compatible co-read. The novel is set in Russia between the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1905) and the start of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917). The Fixer tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jew dwelling in a Russian shtetl 30 versts from Kiev who tries to work as a general handyman, a fixer. But there's not much to fix in the shtetl, and not much money to go around in payment. Bok is usually paid in soup. But Bok is ambitious and after being left by his wife, whom he believes barren, he heads for nearby Kiev where there dwells a large population of Jews living in the ghetto. He believes that in the shtetl life was passing him by. On his way to Kiev, he fantasizes about wealth and property and a new wife who bears him beautiful children. He is able to pass for a Russian. One day he finds a fat man, Nikolai Maximovitch, face down in the snow. Turning him over he detects first the liquour on his breath and then the emblem of the Black Hundreds, a virulently anti-Semitic group, on his coat. The man's daughter appears and together they carry the inebriate home. As a reward, Bok is put to work papering the flat Nikolai Maximovutch owns above his own, for 40 rubles--an enormous sum. Later, Bok is promoted to run the Russian's brick factory. When a dead boy is found, and his death absurdly attributed to nonexistent Jewish practices, Bok is picked up by the police. It's clear from the start that their only goal is to frame him for this murder. The intensity of false witness borne against Bok simply astonishes. The monstrous hate with which his accusers are consumed stuns the mind. The so-called testimonies from so-called witnesses reveal a legal system rotten to the core. Everyone, it seems, is a pathological liar. The fixer is then moved to prison and it is here that Malamud appears to do the impossible: to take us through a day to day existence that is bleakness itself and yet which holds the reader through sheer narrative impetus. Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon was probably a model for Malamud, and without question Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago did not appear until 1972 and The Fixer was published in 1966. Both are set in Russia and contain long detailed sections about coercing false confessions. I know a lot of readers abhor this book, or any book not about sunny, feel-good topics. Those readers are apparently in the game for its power to divert them from their current miseries. The Fixer isn't interested in doing that. It is in fact about misery, about suffering. It's almost as if Malamud said: Let me take the grimmest subject matter imaginable and not only make it supremely readable, but make it into art. However, he has done far more than that. He has also dramatized a common plight under the ignorant Tsar Nicholas II--whose entire family would shortly be executed by the Bolsheviks--and thereby instructs us all in matters of virtue.

"In chains all that was left of freedom was life, just existence; but to exist without choice was the same as death."

sei ebreo già questa è la tua condanna

se non sei tu oggi, lo sarà qualcun altro domani... basta che sia della stessa tua razza

"If I have any philosophy, it's that life could be better than it is."

"What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering."

What can I possibly add to this? Read it for yourself. I highly recommend it, but it may not be for the faint of heart.

معمولا بیشتر کتابهایی که در مورد یهود ستیزی در اروپا نوشته شده به هولوکاست و جنگ جهانی دوم ، یا زندگی یهودیان در گتوها و یا اردوگاه های کار اجباری پرداخته و نویسندگان اروپایی گویا علاقه چندانی به چگونگی زندگی یهودیان در کشورهای دیگر و ابعاد گسترده یهود ستیزی نداشته اند . البته ژرمینال نوشته امیل زولا  و خانواده موسکات اثر ایزاک باشویتس سینگر که نگاهی کامل و جامعع به زندگی یهودیان شرق اروپا و لهستان و سنت های آنان انداخته را می توان سوا و جدا از جریان کلی دانست.
کتاب تعمیرکار نوشته برنارد مالامود هم از همین گروه و رده است ، این رمان که برگرفته از زندگی واقعی مناخیم مندل بلیس یهودی بی گناهی بوده که به ناحق در روسیه زندانی شده را می توان معادل ژرمینال امیل زولا و دریفوس کتاب او دانست . داستان کتاب در اوکراین می گذرد که آن زمان بخشی از روسیه بوده ، اگرچه که امروز برای آزادی و رهایی خود از چنگال خرس روس می جنگد .
یاکوف بک قهرمان داستان یاهمان فرد تعمیرکار ، یهودی زاده ایست که چندان هم یهودی نیست ، او اعتقادی به رسوم و آداب بی شمار دین خود ندارد ، او که به دنبال تغییر است ، با دست خالی از روستای نکبت زده خود راهی کیف می شود اما با مجموعه کاملی از رخدادهای اجتماعی ، فقر و یهودی ستیزی چنان او را خرد و شکسته کرده که زندگی در همان نکبت قبلی نهایت آرزویش می شود .
طنز تلخ داستان یاکوف بک هنگامی ایست که انجمن ضد یهود به او تهمت خون ( یعنی کشتن کودکان غیر یهود و خارج کردن خون آنها برای پختن مصا نوعی نان فطیر ، در درازای تاریخ اروپا این اتهام همواره سبب شروع قتل وعام و نسل کشی یهودیان شده ) نسبت می دهد ، او زمانی با این اتهام سنگین روبرو شده که از پیشامد روزگار با خواندن کتابهای اسپینوزا در حال تکامل و نقد مذهب و جدایی از دین و آیین خود است .
خواندن شرح شوربختی یاکوف بک هنگامی که سقوط او گویا انتهایی ندارد اگر چه برای خواننده تلخ و دردناک است اما در ورای آن می تواند چگونگی تغییر یهودی نگون بخت و تبدیل او به سمبل و نماد اراده و مقاومت را ببیند ، عذاب روحی و رنج جسم و بدبختی او در زندان استادانه بدست نویسنده ترسیم شده وتکامل پله به پله او را نشان می دهد .
اما خواننده ممکن است از خواندن روزهای طولانی ، بلند و تمام نشدنی زندان انفرادی خسته شده و یا پیام مالامود را از همان آغاز زندان درک کند ، در حقیقت شرح روزهای زندان یاکوف بک و گذر روزگار به تلخی و کندی به داستان ریتم کندی داده و کتاب را گرفتار در چرخه ای از یکنواختی و مجموعه ای از رخدادهای قابل پیش بینی کرده است .
در پایان باید گفت که تعمیرکار با وجود یکنواختی داستان ، شرح مدام رنج و شور بختی سخت آزار دهنده ، خواننده را با بخش مهمی از تاریخ روسیه که سرشار از جهل ، خرافات ، فساد و تبعیض است آشنا می کند ، ترکیبی جادویی که در نهایت به فروپاشی و انقلاب می انجامد .

Beautifully written. Intense. Difficult. Compelling.

These are just a few words to describe this book and none of them seem to describe it correctly. It is difficult to read a book like this, especially at this time of the year.

But an important book, especially at this time of Islamophobia. Replace the word "Jew" with "Muslim" and it would describe many Americans beliefs.

The book is set in Tsarist Russia during the Jewish pogroms, but it might just as well have been set in Trump's America.

Very hard to read. But I am glad I did.

Displacement activity is when you do stuff to avoid doing other stuff, so like instead of reviewing The Fixer I have been playing scrabble with daughter (we agree that ex is an allowable word) and switching the tv aimlessly on to find a drama in which they are just about to cut off John Paul Getty’s ear to prove to the father they have got the kid (I did not care to see that) and then I lectured the two cats on the importance of not chasing each other around the house at ridiculous times of the night, but they were sullen and would not look me in the eye, and then I read all the other reviews of The Fixer and found to my complete lack of surprise they’re 99% 4 or 5 stars.

Hmmm. The damn thing won the Pulizer and the National Book Award in 1967 at the very moment the fab four were singing that there’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be – great God almighty, is that really what John Lennon really sings? Yes – it is! So, try telling that blissed out truth to Yakov Bok the poor goon who gets accused of the Jewish ritual murder of a 12 year old boy and spends 3 years in increasingly miserable prison cells awaiting trial. It’s okay, Yakov – according to John Lennon that’s where you’re meant to be, so just go with the antisemitic flow.

Everybody thinks this book is very profound, all about the human condition and the philosophy of Spinoza and the racist state and so forth, but I thought it was like being the clapper in a bell that would never stop ringing. Bongggggg bonggggggg bonnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggg – people are very cruel – bong bongggggg – the Russians really hated the Jews back then – bonggggggg – you can’t escape your fate – bonnnnnnnngggggg – nobody will save you in the end – bongbongbong.

Let’s do a random core sample of this book.


As the day wore on he groaned often, tore his hair with both fists, and knocked his head repeatedly against the wall P91

Manacled, his legs chained, nervously exhausted, his body in flight though he tried with ten fingers to hold on to his mind, he stood with five armed guards at his back P138

The leg chains were too short for Yakov to climb the steep steps, so he was seized under the arms by two of the gendarmes and dragged and pushed up P172

All day th fixer walked in his cell, sometimes he ran, five steps, three, five, three, breaking the circuit to hurl himself against the wall, or smash his fists against the metal door P232

At five in the morning the day began and never ended. In the early evening dark he was already lying on his mattress, trying to sleep Sometimes he tried all night. P274

They’re trying to unhinge me, thought the fixer, and then they’ll say I went mad because I committed the crime. P319

He was chained to the wall again. Things went badly. P375


So you see what I’m saying – what we have here is nothing but the unjust cruel sadistic sufferings of wretched Jakov-the-nobody for 350 pages, with a few pages of uncontrolled rantings from the prison warden about how the Jews make matzos for Passover from the blood of Christian children thrown in to give the reader a break. Now and again a defence attorney appears to dangle some distant fruitless hope in front of the half-dead Jakov and he grasps at this faint possibility with a painful naivete. The defence attorney usually commits suicide or is mysteriously drowned within a few pages.

Yes, most of this sorry tale is based on the real case of Mendel Beilis, a falsely accused Jew who – remarkably – was acquitted by the Christians on the jury when he finally got tried. (But he wasn’t a free-thinking non-religious guy like Jakov. That part is made up. )

The wrongly accused man – boy, we have a lot of those in our fiction. There’s a listopia devoted to them
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/...

which omits some of the more famous – off the top of my head, how about Atonement, The Trial, The Count of Monte Cristo, Caleb Williams, Les Miserables (well he pinched a loaf), To Kill a Mockingbird, Alias Grace, The Green Mile, Darkness at Noon – and Hitchcock liked them too, see The Wrong Man and Frenzy. (In these tales we always get the story from the poor innocent’s point of view. We never get to be with the perpetrators. So we readers always get to feel totally righteous.)

Jonathan Safran Foer in his introduction says this is pre-eminently a novel to galvanise the reader into political action

When I finished reading this novel, I felt castigated and inspired. Grumbling about the state of the world suddenly wasn’t enough. And excusing myself from political activity felt wrong

He is much more robust than me. When I finished this novel I was thinking wow, if you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time there is really not one thing you can do about it. I was actually de-galvanised. I was enervated. The only glint of light in the whole novel was a reflection off the polished boot that was stamping down on Jakov’s head. It was all much too much.

For a much better novel about the grinding misery of prison : One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn

For a novel which makes the antisemitism of The Fixer seem like a stroll in the park on a pleasant Sunday morning, should you really want such a thing, see The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski.

Πρώτη επαφή με τον Μάλαμουντ και σίγουρα δε θα είναι η τελευταία. Τι έχει γράψει ο άνθρωπος !

Η αλήθεια είναι πως λατρεύω αυτή τη θεματολογία, βιβλία στα οποία προβάλλονται πρόδηλα η αδικία και ειδικότερα η προδοσία.

Στο συγκεκριμένο ανάγνωσμα ο πολιτικός και εθνικός σκοταδισμός είναι διάχυτος.

Ο Γιάκοβ Μποκ είναι ένας φτωχός άνθρωπος του οποίου η μοίρα είναι καταδικασμένη κ μαυρισμένη από την αρχή της ζωής του. Ταλαιπωρείται χρόνια, παντρεύτηκε μια γυναίκα που στην ουσία δεν τον αγαπά.
Αποφασίζει λοιπόν, να αφήσει τη γυναίκα του και να ταξιδέψει στο Κίεβο αναζητώντας μια νέα αρχή. Εκεί βρίσκει δουλειά σε ένα πλινθοποιείο του οποίου ιδιοκτήτης είναι ένας αντισημίτης. Αναγκάζεται γι’ αυτό το λόγο να αποποιηθεί κ να αποκρύψει την εβραϊκή του καταγωγή.
Μια μέρα κοντά στο χώρο εργασίας βρίσκεται ένα δολοφονημένο αγόρι.

Όλα γκρεμίζονται αφού ο Μποκ χαρακτηρίζεται ένοχος για το φόνο του παιδιού.

Οδηγείται στη φυλακή και εκεί αρχίζει το μαρτύριό του. Στήνεται ένα καλοστημένο κατηγορητήριο εναντίον του με σκοπό την καταδίκη του Εβραίου και κατ’ επέκταση όλου του εβραϊκού λαού.

Ο Γιάκοβ μέσα στη φυλακή βασανίζεται, ζει άθλιες συνθήκες, δεν τον αφήνουν να φάει, να πλυθεί, να μιλήσει και να προαυλιστεί. Φτάνουν στο σημείο να τον δηλητηριάσουν. Τον πιέζουν με κάθε δυνατό μέσο να ομολογήσει κάτι που δεν έχει κάνει. Ο Μποκ δε λυγίζει, δεν ομολογεί ενοχή αλλά φωνάζει την αθωότητά του.

Ένα βιβλίο που καταδεικνύει τα πολιτικά καθεστώτα, την κατάφωρη αδικία και τη θυσία αθώων ανθρώπων που κατηγορήθηκαν και υπέστησαν βασανιστήρια στο όνομα του εθνικού φανατισμού.