The Tenants (FSG Classics) - Softcover

Malamud, Professor Bernard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374521026 ISBN 13: 9780374521028

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988

Synopsis

With a new introduction by Aleksandar Hemon

In The Tenants (1971), Bernard Malamud brought his unerring sense of modern urban life to bear on the conflict between blacks and Jews then inflaming his native Brooklyn. The sole tenant in a rundown tenement, Henry Lesser is struggling to finish a novel, but his solitary pursuit of the sublime grows complicated when Willie Spearmint, a black writer ambivalent toward Jews, moves into the building. Henry and Willie are artistic rivals and unwilling neighbors, and their uneasy peace is disturbed by the presence of Willie's white girlfriend Irene and the landlord Levenspiel's attempts to evict both men and demolish the building. This novel's conflict, current then, is perennial now; it reveals the slippery nature of the human condition, and the human capacity for violence and undoing.

About this title

Review:

"Malamud ... gentles his material with humor, with that redemptive conscience, and above all with a compassion which extends all of his works beyond the mapped margins of existence, however destitute." --Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"Malamud's best book in years." --The New York Times

Book Description:

First published in 1971, The Tenants is a ruthlessly funny dissection of a relationship of profound unease and mutual destruction.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0374521026
• ISBN 13: 9780374521028
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 230