The Magic Barrel - Hardcover

Malamud, Bernard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374504121 ISBN 13: 9780374504120

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1958

Synopsis

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction

Introduction by Jhumpa Lahiri

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 struggleing 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.

About this title

Review

"In the short story, Malamud achieved an almost psalmlike compression. He has been called the Jewish Hawthorne, but he might just as well be thought a Jewish Chopin, a prose composer of preludes and noctures."--Mark Shechner, "Partisan Review"
"There are thirteen stoires in "The Magic Barrel "and every one of them is a small, highly individualized work of art. This is the kind of book that calls for not admiration but gratitude."--Richard Sullivan, "The Chicago Tribune "

In the short story, Malamud achieved an almost psalmlike compression. He has been called the Jewish Hawthorne, but he might just as well be thought a Jewish Chopin, a prose composer of preludes and noctures. "Mark Shechner, Partisan Review"

There are thirteen stoires in "The Magic Barrel "and every one of them is a small, highly individualized work of art. This is the kind of book that calls for not admiration but gratitude. "Richard Sullivan, The Chicago Tribune""

"In the short story, Malamud achieved an almost psalmlike compression. He has been called the Jewish Hawthorne, but he might just as well be thought a Jewish Chopin, a prose composer of preludes and noctures." --Mark Shechner, Partisan Review

"There are thirteen stoires in The Magic Barrel and every one of them is a small, highly individualized work of art. This is the kind of book that calls for not admiration but gratitude." --Richard Sullivan, The Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher

The Magic Barrel was chosen out of all the American fiction of its year to receive the National Book Award of 1959 – an honour which had only once before been accorded to a book of short stories, those of William Faulkner.Malamud’s great gifts as a writer are his humour, his profound concern for all human life and his ability to transmute common things and people into a strange poetry – as the New York Herald Tribune said ‘He is master of an alchemy whereby the grossest reality is converted to the most imaginative uses. He transcribes everyday life and yet the result glows with lights never seen on land or sea.’

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy
• Publication date: 1958
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374504121
• ISBN 13: 9780374504120
• Binding: Hardcover