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3.0 

The Magic Barrel

By Bernard Malamud & Jhumpa Lahiri
The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud & Jhumpa Lahiri digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

Winner of the National Book Award: “Every one of [the stories] is a small, highly individualized work of art.” —The Chicago Tribune

With an introduction by Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Namesake

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 struggling New York Jewish Painter Arthur Fidelman, roams amid the ruins of old Europe in search of his artistic patrimony. The stories tell of egg candlers and shoemakers, matchmakers, and rabbis, in a voice that blends vigorous urban realism, Yiddish idiom, and literary inventiveness.

A high point in the history of the modern American short story, The Magic Barrel is a fiction collection which, at its heart, is about the immigrant experience. Few books of any kind have managed to depict struggle and frustration and heartbreak with such delight, or such artistry.

“Malamud possesses a gift for characterization that is often breathtaking. . . .[His] fiction bubbles with life.” —New York Times

“[Malamud] has been called the Jewish Hawthorne, but he might just as well be thought a Jewish Chopin, a prose composer of preludes and noctures.” —Partisan Review

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12 Reviews

3.0
“…I don’t get it.”
“Wonderful performance by the LA Theater Works courtesy of Audiobooksync. I really enjoyed this! Reminded me almost of a twilight Zone episode without any creepy elements. I wish it had been a bit longer or had included a rendition of another play from the book, but it was very well done.”

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