It was one of my required readings in college.

Like every Malamud novel, The Fixer is a very disturbing read, almost traumatic.
The writing is brilliant, but I have no intention to read it again. Ever.

Yakov Bok is non-religious and apolitical. He simply wants a better life. He is slightly bitter that life gives him lemons but no sugar to make lemonade but that does not keep him from trying to improve. He reads Spinoza to educate himself and moves to Kiev to start a better life. He is a repairman aka a "fixer". Unfortunately, he is also a Jew in Tsarist Russia.

I like Yakov. He is Everyman. He is not a hero nor a wise man. But he is sincere and honest. He is a basically honest man placed in an horrific situation. His one deceit, trying to pass as a gentile in an anti-Semitic society, is a deceit born of desperation and survival. Yakov is accused of killing a young boy in a "Blood Ritual". In the Russia of 1905 he has little chance of proving himself innocent. He is beaten and thrown in jail to waste away only to be repeatedly told to sign a confession to stop the torture. Yakov refuses but his faith in humanity, in society and in God is tested and weakened. He meets only one man who is willing to fight for him but even that is no match for the fears and prejudices of an unfair society.

Malamud is not the type of writer to sugar-coat anything. His style is to the point and his descriptions of prison life comes close to unbearable. Yet Yakov remains the focus of this tale and that is the strength. Many of the most moving moments comes when Yakov have delusions and dreams caused by starvation, illness and general suffering. These delusional dialogues hold much of the philosophical meat of the novel. The ending dialogue of Yakov talking to Tzar Nicholas is a fitting and satisfactory scene in a climax that looks open-ended but really isn'., For while the author packs a lot of social and political discussion points in his tale, it is really about the emotional and philosophical journey of Yakov who would like to "fix" much more than just material objects but doesn't know how.

I don't know how well Malamud has held up in the 21st century. But if any writer can be called a student of the human condition it is he. His writings still hold true in its assessment of humankind's fears toward the unfamiliar and society's oppression toward others.

“Rabbi”, a simple Jew asks in Fiddler on the Roof, “do you have a blessing for the tsar?” The rabbi responds, “May G-D bless and keep the tsar…far away from us.” As comical as this movie line seemed, life in tsarist Russia were dangerous times to be a Jew. Law abiding citizens feared successful Jewish businessmen, and Cossacks instigated pogroms on Jewish shtetls with hope of eradicating them. Most Jews, most likely my family included, were concentrated in the Pale of Settlement, which is located in present day Ukraine. Other than the Pale, Jews knew that life could be dangerous and best to get out of the country while they still could. My family immigrated to the United States between 1905 and 1910, avoiding the last dark days of the tsar and the equally dangerous days of revolution. Most likely, Bernard Malamud’s family left Russia during those dark days as well or he would not have been present to write a griping novel about a Jew who was scapegoated for the murder of a Russian boy. Malamud, one of a group of gifted Jewish writers in the mid 20th century, would win both the national book award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Fixer,a tale about a simple Jew who most likely wished that the tsar was as far away from him as possible.

Yakov Shepsovitch Bok was a simple Jew who lived in the pale of settlement with his wife Raisl and her father Shmuel. While it was not a beautiful life, it was simple within Bok’s means. He worked as a fixer, a handyman, and did not have much, but at the end of the week had enough kopeks to fund a shabbos meal for his family. One thing that Yakov desired was children, but after six and a half years Raisl remained childless. According to Jewish law, a man can divorce his wife after ten years if his wife has not produced any children. Yakov grew frustrated with his wife, so she left the shtetl and took up relations with a non Jew. An orphan, Yakov had nothing left in the shtetl even though this was all he knew. He made a decision to abandon life as a religious Jew and adopt the position of free thinker, which he formulated on the teachings of Spinoza. As a non religious Jew without peyos, a yarmulke, and tzitzis, perhaps he could find work in the city of Kiev, and, after earning some rubles, perhaps he could send for Raisl and Shmuel, and they could start a new life in the city or even in America. That was Yakov’s impetus for leaving the shtetl anyway. What he failed to grasp, however, was that life in the city would be worse for Jews than in the shtetl where for the most they were left to do as they pleased, the blessing from Fiddler on the Roof all the more true with each passing page.

The Kiev of the last days of Tsar Nicholas II was not a kind place for Jews. The only tsar who did not officially persecute the Jews was Tsar Alexander III, which is why many Russian Jews will name their children Alexander or Alexandra. Nicholas, on the other hand, blamed the Jews for all the ills in society and placed many Jewish laws on the books, staging pogroms in Jewish villages if he believed Jews to be causing too many problems. The only city where Jews were welcome was Odessa but even that was sketchy, which is why as many Jews as possible left Russia in the last days of Nicholas’ rule. In Kiev, Jews lived in the Podol, a ghetto, and Yakov found a room with one Aaron Latke. He had trouble finding work because most Jews could not afford to pay for his services, and goyim would never employ a Jew at a job that actually earned rubles. Desperate, Yakov began to wonder why he even came to Kiev in the first place; perhaps, life in the shtetl was not so baf after all. His luck began to change when he found a drunkard face down in the snow one evening and brought him home. His reward was forty rubles and employment in the man’s brickyard, along with housing. This man was an antisemite who would never employ a Jew, so Yakov reinvented himself as Yakov Ivanovitch Dugoloshev. As Dugoloshev, doors would open to Yakov that would not be available to him as Yakov Bok; however, even without his garment, Yakov still looked like a Jew and his name, as unique as it sounded, did not fool many, the goyim plotting of a way to do away with him.

Since the early days of Christianity, uninformed gentiles believed that Jews blood let Christian children for part of their Passover rituals. During cycles of heightened attacks on Jews, parents would keep their children inside homes during the days leading up to the Passover festival in case a Christian mob would target them as retribution. In the time around Passover, a Christian boy is founded stabbed to death in a cave outside of Kiev. Even if one or more Christians killed the boy, the easiest thing to do would be to blame a Jew, and the most convenient Jew to scapegoat was Yakov. Jews during the tsar’s rule were thrown in prison without a cause, but in Yakov’s case, he was accused of killing an innocent Russian boy. The last seventy five percent of the novel deals with Yakov’s confinement in prison and the conditions that deteriorated by the day. Officials responsible for his prison stay and indictment were antisemitic, supported the tsar, and believed the timeless tale of bloodletting children for Passover. None of these men were wont to hear Yakov’s side of the story, much less to let him go free. To these men, he is a Jew even if he used an assumed name and lived as a freethinker rather than a religious person. Any person who exhibited the minutest amount of sympathy toward Yakov throughout his ordeal was found dead. He was left with no allies and hoped that someone in Russia believed him before the indictment went through.

As most of the narrative occurs within the horrid prison conditions and included conversation and contemplation on Yakov’s part, I could only read the text in small doses. Throughout history, Jews have been scapegoats and left to fend for themselves and the whole premise left me frustrated with various emotions boiling through me. That I finished reading this novel about persecution against Jews on a day where Israel buried victims of terrorism was not lost on me. As much as things change, sadly they stay the same. The Dreyfus affair, Yakov Bok, Israeli hostages. It is why it took me a good twenty hours to formulate my thoughts to write here even though I was wowed as usual by Malamud and knew that he had written an award winning novel. Malamud wrote at a time where antisemitism still abounded in the United States. He brought to the attention the plight of Jews in antisemitic societies and perhaps lead people to think, but here in America, it is different, it is a society forged on religious freedoms. Judging by the climate today, America is sadly not different, just late to the ballgame. Yakov Bok had been based on Mendel Beilis, who had been charged on false charges for a similar crime and then miraculously acquitted by a Russian jury. Malamud told this tale and then some, which lead to him garnering awards and accolades for his work. I hope that we as a Jewish people do not need to experience a Yakov Bok again; yet, after yesterday’s world events, I have to keep my faith that that day never comes.

5 stars

حظِ وافر؛ ادبیات درست، روایت پویا؛ گاهی تند و نفس گیر و گاهی آرام و ساکن و رنج آور... پشت این کتاب یک مترجم درست و درمان، جوان و گاهی خام اما با استعداد و با سواد نشسته (شاید هم خوابیده است)
مالامود را دوست داشتم و اکنون بیشتر دوستش دارم. گاهی فکر می کنم باید نظرم در مورد ادبیات آمریکا و بی مایگی اش تغییر کند؛ اگر چه فقط با مالامود نمی توانم نظرم را عوض کنم؛ مسخرگی ادبیات آمریکا بیشتر از اینهاست که با یک نویسنده درست شود اما به هر حال مالامود بخش بزرگی از آن را اصلاح کرده است. لذت بردم و کیف کردم

O altfel de carte, un mileu literar brodat în jurul lui Iakov Bok, un evreu sărac care spune despre el însuși că "Eu am fost tras pe sfoară încă de la născare." Soția aparent stearpă și infidelă care-l face un soț părăsit, plin de rușine, plus sentimentul de prizonierat într-un tîrgusor, îl împing pe Iakov Cîrpaciul să plece la Kiev ca să-și câștige pâinea cinstit și sa vadă și el puțin lumea. Câteva alegeri greșite, inevitabilul ghinion și împrejurările istorice il trimit pe Iakov în închisoare cu acuzația gravă de a fi omorât un copil rus. Bietul cirpaci se transformă dintr-un evrei liber într-un (posibil) vinovat prins în capcană, abuzat, abandonat și neputincios. "Noi știm că n-ai comis crima, dar ce-i mai rău e că și ei știu, dar susțin că ești vinovat."
"Cîrpaciul" este genul acela de carte despre care nu știi nimic, ajunge la tine printr-o coincidență / recomandare fericită și te atinge atât de tare încât îți este drag chiar și numai să o vezi cu coada ochiului pe raft în bibliotecă și să știi că este a ta.

Bernard Malamud's The Fixer offers a grimly compelling portrait of antisemitism in Tsarist Russia. Drawing on the real-life Mendel Beilis case (closely enough that some writers accuse him of plagiarizing Beilis’s memoirs), Malamud imagines repairman Yakov Bok, who travels to Kiev circa 1911 seeking steady employment. Neither religious nor particularly conscious of his identity, Bok disguises himself as a Gentile, gains the trust of and works for a Tsarist official until he’s accused of participating in ritual child murder. Barely aware of what’s going on, Bok becomes trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare as new charges are foisted upon him, each with little evidence or cause beyond his Judaism - and his daring to defy the edicts of Christian society. Only a sympathetic lawyer offers him any hope or comfort, though even he can do little when Bok’s case catches the attention of the Tsar himself. Malamud scores with his sparse yet penetrating prose style; he allows Yakov’s fate to speak for itself, with the protagonist neither a willing martyr, nor understanding his plight, nor capable of doing much to change it. Published in 1967, the book bares a loose resemblance to the anticommunist literature of Koestler and Solzhenitsyn, transposing their visions of the Soviet gulag to to the Okhrana’s prison cells (though, it must be said, not without cause). But Malamud’s concern is less ideological than humanist: Yakov’s grim plight is the fate of any Jewish person trapped in a society that distrusts people of his background, or indeed anyone who stands out anywhere. His iniquities are painful, his reckoning with his religious identity (inescapable despite his efforts to assimilate) heartbreaking, the overall contours of his plight painfully familiar. The resulting work is grim and downbeat, yet often morbidly humorous, richly ironic and even triumphant in showing the endurance of the Human Spirit - and, in particular, the Jewish faith.

This was a good book, but a great book? I am not really sure. It certainly has a sort of Solzhenitsyn depressive quality to it, as our atheist, Jewish protagonist is imprisoned for merely being a Jew at the wrong place at the wrong time. I can definitely see the parallels to the horrors of WWII, but the writing sort of dragged at times. It is less compelling than, say, Kafka's work, or books by Malamud's friends Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. I can see why critics liked it, but I feel that In Cold Blood was the best American novel of 1966 and more deserving of the big prize.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

I personaggi dei romanzi di Malamud portano con sé sempre un velo di malinconia e "L'uomo di Kiev" non fa eccezione. A differenza de "Il commesso" o "Una nuova vita" dove i protagonisti si muovevano nei sobborghi delle metropoli, qui le vicende si svolgono in Russia. La Russia qui descritta è la Russia zarista del 1911, la Russia antisemita. Dalla Russia a Kiev conosciamo Yakov, un emigrato che giunge in Ucraina a cercare fortuna. La vita a Kiev gli mostrerà il lato più crudele, arrivando anche a doversi difendere da una accusa di omicidio. Con L'uomo di Kiev, Malamud ci mostra la forza, la debolezza di Yakov, la bellezza della dignità e della libertà di un individuo contro ogni forma di violenza, sopraffazione e abuso che l'uomo vive costantemente.

tamirci başlığıyla dilimize çevrilen bu kitabı kafka ve canetti sevenlere öneririm. sahaflarda kiev'deki adam olarak da aratabilirsiniz.

"kafesin biri, bir kuş aramaya çıktı." f. kafka

netflix'deki son çar belgeseliyle beraber bitirdim bu romanı, şansa aynı dönemde aynı pis bozuk düzende geçiyor.
yahudi yakov bok'un başına gelenler aslında bir yandan "dönüşüm" hikayesi. işlemediği bir suç yüzünden 2 sene iddianame, 6 ay da davasını bekleyen yakov'un çektiği işkenceler insanın soluğunu kesiyor. yahudilerle ilgili hurafeler, yahudi nefreti, yakov'a kurulan inanılmaz komplo o kadar da inanılmaz değil çünkü daha bugün yeni akit bu saçma sapan hıristiyan çocuğun kanını akıtma yalanını haber yaptı. yani anti semitizm bitmiyor, bitmiyor.
ama yakov'un tüm o işkencelere karşın bir biçimde aklını kullanması, suçu kabul edip cezasız yırtmak yerine suçsuzluğunu haykırması, hiç kaybetmediği onuru, spinoza'yı düşünerek yaşadığı dönüşüm romanın asıl büyüklüğü. korkak bir adamdan cesur, apolitik bir adamdan politik bir kahraman yaratması ve bunu çok iyi aktarması malamud'un başarısı.
ukrayna, özellikle de kiev gerçekten bir ortaçağ şehriymiş. nasıl karanlık ve hurafelerle dolu.
yakov'un çektikleri arasında onu onursuzlaştırmaya çalışan en iğrenç işkence günde 3 kez çırılçıplak aranması. bu onursuzlaştırma biçiminin hâlâ devam etmesi de insanlığın ayıbı olsun. onur yaser can'ı hiç unutmayın.

It seems like the book is asking for meditation on the concept of freedom and it does this on a couple of levels. One is Yakov's inability to be free of his Jewishness despite thinking himself distanced from that religious heritage. Another is in the unfairness of Yakov's imprisonment and consequent denial of freedom amid the false accusations of his part in the murder of a child. Then there is freedom in the sense of being free from necessity -- maybe a spiritual freedom.

The first two kinds of freedom unfold as you would expect. Yakov travels to Kiev and tries to hide his Jewish identity. When he is found out, he is persecuted and is the unfortunate focus of ignorant, hostile bias that derives from fear, superstition, and that is weakly justified on Christian religious terms. Yakov spends the majority of the book in prison, awaiting an indictment as prosecutors try to invent evidence and motive about his role in the crime. Yakov suffers cruelty and deprivation, and all of this is truly awful, but I don't really feel like I learned much from it.

The third kind of freedom had a bit more to it. Early on there are references to Spinoza's Ethics, enough that it was clear that this meant something to the book. I hadn't ever read Spinoza, so I spent a bit of time on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to learn enough to connect some dots. What I gather is that Spinoza sees freedom as a state in which one's being is not the result of being the object of another's need. In a way, all that is happening to Yakov, all the ways that he is not free can be traced to the way that he is positioned relative to others' needs, whether political, criminal, religious, domestic, economic, etc. The persecutions he faces reflects the needs that others have or imagine to have of him. And as Yakov begins to realize this he actualizes or imagines actualizing an effort to sever himself from those needs, to attain a kind of freedom of the spirit (maybe?) in defiance of his physical fettering.

Ultimately, this positioning seems to put responsibility for our freedom in our hands and it suggests that even in situations of abusive denial of personal freedom there is still an individual choice to make that preserves freedom -- in this case radical social and cognitive disassociation. Maybe that is supposed to be an uplifting part. I don't know. The author did choose to end the story before any acquittal that would have restored a kind of freedom.

I really enjoyed this story. However, I wondered how it could be nominated and even win a Pulitzer because of one of the requisites for judging: the book must be about life in the United States. Ah, well.