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On the centenary of Malamud´s birth, Atlantic Books is proud to republish what is considered to be the haunting masterpiece of one of the giants of post-war American fiction

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Winner of the 1966 Pulitzer Prize and National Book AwardKiev, 1911. When a twelve-year-old Russian boy is found stabbed to death, his body drained of blood, the accusation of ritual murder is levelled at the Jews. Yakov Bok - a handyman hiding his Jewish identity from his anti-Semitic employer - is first outed and blamed. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit. What becomes of this man under pressure, for whom acquittal is made to seem as hopeless as conviction, is the subject of a terrifying masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction. Acclaim for Malamud:

´Malamud is a rich original of the first rank´ Saul Bellow

´Malamud has never produced a mediocre novel... He is always profoundly convincing´ Anthony Burgess

´One of Malamud´s extraordinary gifts has always been for lifting the realistic world up, into the realm of metaphysical fantasy. Another has been to take life, lives, seriously´ Malcolm Bradbury

´One of those rare writers who makes other writers eat their hearts out´ Melvyn Bragg Of Malamud´s short stories:

´I have discovered a short-story writer who is better than any of them, including myself´ Flannery O´Connor

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His masterpiece Philip Roth

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