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The Fixer

by Bernard Malamud, Jonathan Safran Foer (Introduction)

3.98 of 5 stars 3.98 · rating details · 3,556 ratings · 202 reviews

The Fixer is the winner of the 1967 National Book Award for Fiction and the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The Fixer (1966) is Bernard Malamud's best-known and most acclaimed novel -- one that makes manifest his roots in Russian fiction, especially that of Isaac Babel.

Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok,

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Paperback, 335 pages

Published May 5th 2004 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published 1966)

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Pulitzer Winners: Fiction & Novels

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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

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Jul 14, 2007 Elizabeth rated it 2 of 5 stars

A huge disappointment as I’d briefly christened Malamud My Favorite Author after having recently read The Assistant and several short stories (“The Angel Levine”!). This is the book that won Malamud the Nobel, and I had to wonder why. It’s ideological, heavy handed, a hammer on your skull, bald-faced allegory, and miserable to read, pages and pages of suffering. I know there’s a grand point here, and it has something to do with the philosophy of Spinoza (which I haven’t read), God’s betrayal of...more

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May 31, 2012 Bettie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: tbr-busting-2012, summer-2012, slavic, published-1966, paper-read, one-penny-wonder, ouch, historical-fiction, pulitzer

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Sep 15, 2011 William rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: us, fiction, 20-ce

After reading over a hundred pages in Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium, which is in large part about the horrid pogroms unleashed on Europe's Jews in the Middle Ages, I thought The Fixer would be a compatible co-read. The novel is set in Russia between the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1905) and the start of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917). The Fixer tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jew dwelling in a Russian shtetl 30 versts from Kiev who tries to work as a general handyman, a fixer....more After reading over a hundred pages in Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium, which is in large part about the horrid pogroms unleashed on Europe's Jews in the Middle Ages, I thought The Fixer would be a compatible co-read. The novel is set in Russia between the end of the Russo-Japanese War (1905) and the start of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917). The Fixer tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jew dwelling in a Russian shtetl 30 versts from Kiev who tries to work as a general handyman, a fixer. But there's not much to fix in the shtetl, and not much money to go around in payment. Bok is usually paid in soup. But Bok is ambitious and after being left by his wife, whom he believes barren, he heads for nearby Kiev where there dwells a large population of Jews living in the ghetto. He believes that in the shtetl life was passing him by. On his way to Kiev, he fantasizes about wealth and property and a new wife who bears him beautiful children. He is able to pass for a Russian. One day he finds a fat man, Nikolai Maximovitch, face down in the snow. Turning him over he detects first the liquour on his breath and then the emblem of the Black Hundreds, a virulently anti-Semitic group, on his coat. The man's daughter appears and together they carry the inebriate home. As a reward, Bok is put to work papering the flat Nikolai Maximovutch owns above his own, for 40 rubles--an enormous sum. Later, Bok is promoted to run the Russian's brick factory. When a dead boy is found, and his death absurdly attributed to nonexistent Jewish practices, Bok is picked up by the police. It's clear from the start that their only goal is to frame him for this murder. The intensity of false witness borne against Bok simply astonishes. The monstrous hate with which his accusers are consumed stuns the mind. The so-called testimonies from so-called witnesses reveal a legal system rotten to the core. Everyone, it seems, is a pathological liar. The fixer is then moved to prison and it is here that Malamud appears to do the impossible: to take us through a day to day existence that is bleakness itself and yet which holds the reader through sheer narrative impetus. Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon was probably a model for Malamud, and without question Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago did not appear until 1972 and The Fixer was published in 1966. Both are set in Russia and contain long detailed sections about coercing false confessions. I know a lot of readers abhor this book, or any book not about sunny, feel-good topics. Those readers are apparently in the game for its power to divert them from their current miseries. The Fixer isn't interested in doing that. It is in fact about misery, about suffering. It's almost as if Malamud said: Let me take the grimmest subject matter imaginable and not only make it supremely readable, but make it into art. However, he has done far more than that. He has also dramatized a common plight under the ignorant Tsar Nicholas II--whose entire family would shortly be executed by the Bolsheviks--and thereby instructs us all in matters of virtue. (less)

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Sep 02, 2012 Michelle Layton added it · review of another edition

Just finished chapter 6 of part 5.

This book is breaking my heart. Yakov, you poor poor man. I've been incredibly privileged in my life and have had very little, if any, personal confrontations with anyone questioning my race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, or anything else. I want to feel that the world has changed since then, as I read a book about this intense anti-semitic witch hunt- but then I read about McCarthyism in our recent past, the recent shooting at a Sikh temple...more Just finished chapter 6 of part 5.

This book is breaking my heart. Yakov, you poor poor man. I've been incredibly privileged in my life and have had very little, if any, personal confrontations with anyone questioning my race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, or anything else. I want to feel that the world has changed since then, as I read a book about this intense anti-semitic witch hunt- but then I read about McCarthyism in our recent past, the recent shooting at a Sikh temple, the angry comments about Islam on a news thread when a muslim college student explains why she wears a head covering and isn't oppressed by her religion. Why don't we see beyond differences and realize that we are all people? Value life. Be patient and forgiving. There is so much anger and misunderstanding in this world- please be kind.

A character in the book says it well:

"The French have a saying, 'the more it changes, the more it remains the same.' You must admit there may be a certain truth to that, especially with reference to what we call 'society'. In effect it has not changed in its essentials from what it was in the dim past, even though we tend loosely to think of civilization as progress. I frankly no longer believe in that concept. I respect man for what he has to go through in life, and sometimes for how he does it, but he has changed little since he began to pretend he was civilized, and the same thing may be said about our society... I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist, One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand, and if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small thing to offer- he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity"

We are not as civilized as we want to believe that we are. However, that doesn't mean we should become discouraged and leave everything to rot- it's a reminder that we are in charge of our own humanity and we should not withdraw when we have something to offer. This world is made up of individuals and it is vital that we take the time to understand one another. We don't always have to agree, but learning about different ideas is so important and helps us humanize those around us. Please do all you can.
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Dec 17, 2008 Ademption rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Philip Roth readers who want more suffering and less sex

Shelves: novels, classics, award-winners

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Jun 18, 2008 Mara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, russia, prison

What a difficult book to read, and, I can only imagine, to write. We start with the injustice of poverty and lack of opportunity in the shtetl and move almost directly into a variety of unjust accusations leveled against Yakov Bok, who has become a scapegoat for all the imagined evil deeds of all the Jews in Russia.

Bok leaves the shtetl with hopes of a better life in Kiev. At first, things look up for him. Serendipity finds him a good job, and he is able to afford some books, and even put away s...more

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Feb 12, 2009 Vasare rated it 1 of 5 stars

one of my least favorite books ever

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Apr 13, 2013 Ken Deshaies rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is, in a sense, a difficult book to read. Actually, it draws you in, compelling you to move through the experiences of its protagonist. Yet you are living vicariously the difficult life of a prisoner reviled by the authorities who, even though they know of his innocence, want to see him suffer for his presumed faith.

Yakov Bok was born poor, a Jew who grew disenchanted with his faith and, hence, considered himself an independent thinker. Yet he cannot shake his birthright and, to his contin...more This is, in a sense, a difficult book to read. Actually, it draws you in, compelling you to move through the experiences of its protagonist. Yet you are living vicariously the difficult life of a prisoner reviled by the authorities who, even though they know of his innocence, want to see him suffer for his presumed faith.

Yakov Bok was born poor, a Jew who grew disenchanted with his faith and, hence, considered himself an independent thinker. Yet he cannot shake his birthright and, to his continuing frustration, must live in a society (early 20th Century Russia) that reviles Jews. Malamud thoroughly explores the repugnant and widespread philosophy of the time that tends to cast blame on Jews for most (or all) societal problems.

Anxious to better himself, after his wife leaves him, he leaves his little village for the city. A chance event causes him to offer assistance to a gentleman in trouble. This leads to a real job where he makes more money than he's ever earned. However, it also requires that he live in a quarter where Jews are forbidden to live. His only real break with his honest nature is to hide his Jewish identity. But, his loyalty to his employer also brings a threat of retribution from a key employee, who ends up causing Bok's downfall.

Bok is accused of the ritual murder of a young boy. He becomes the accused partly because the general wisdom was that the murderer had to be a Jew, and partly because his junior employee was anxious to turn him in. For that, he spends two years in prison in the barest, most horrible conditions, before charges are ever brought. Yet he resists every attempt by the prosecuting authorities to get him to confess.

You see him grow in terms of his personal moral strength, even as he pleads for better conditions. Several related events that come to his attention serve to spiral him further into the depths of his despair, but also seem to eventually bring him more spiritual strength.

As I said, a difficult, but compelling read and brings a genuine perspective on the historical realities of the day along with a searching investigation of inner spirit. (less)

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Apr 04, 2013 elisa is currently reading it

any of my friends who are reading this - i have *so very much* loved this site, and following all of your reviews. i cannot in good conscience (or any conscience at all) continue using this site now that it has been swallowed by amazon, a company that is literally destroying the book industry - that's brick and mortar bookstores (i'd feel this way even if i didn't own one), publishers, and authors. i've spent days looking at other sites, none of which are quite the same as this one, but i'm movi...more any of my friends who are reading this - i have *so very much* loved this site, and following all of your reviews. i cannot in good conscience (or any conscience at all) continue using this site now that it has been swallowed by amazon, a company that is literally destroying the book industry - that's brick and mortar bookstores (i'd feel this way even if i didn't own one), publishers, and authors. i've spent days looking at other sites, none of which are quite the same as this one, but i'm moving on to a few, and will see how they go. they all seem to be trying to recruit goodreads people, and are interested in doing what they can for us. join me at librarything.com, booklikes.com, thereadingroom.com.

good lord i'm going to miss this.

update: i've been waiting for a reply to an import question at thereadingroom.com (not for too long, though), waiting for import to happen on booklikes.com (it's been 24 hours, but they're way overwhelmed with goodreads refugees and seem responsive and to be really trying), but have enjoyed tooling around librarything.com, even though it seems pretty clunky at first. there is a whole lot of information there, so much that it's pretty overwhelming at first, and takes a lot of getting used to navigating. but way cool, and incredibly welcoming and helpful people there. i'm already enjoying being there, and the groups that they have. i suspect i'll end up there for most of my book community needs. please join me, and find me there!

update #2: i think that all of the alternative to goodreads are a bit overwhelmed by the major influx of the goodreads community who are streaming over to these other sites, so they're a bit backlogged. they all seem to be really trying, though. the only one that i've gone to that is working great is librarything, because they already had such a big user base. the others seem great, too. if you like the interface at goodreads, the interface at librarything is hard to get used to (or if you are no good with old pc looking screens, like i am, it's also hard) but has an incredible amount of information and data. booklikes seems to be the closest looking to goodreads. they're european based and have similar functionality that goodreads does, but seems to be in the early stages still, so are working on getting certain things there that you already have here. also your reviews are a blog instead of a review, but that doesn't seem to be a big deal to me. my books all imported over there now but it looks like my reviews didn't, so i'll be doing some manual cut and pasting to get that up and running. (update! they totally came over, just not where i was looking. awesomeness. and all the dates came through accurately, which they didn't at librarything, where i'll have to manually fix each book.) i'm elisas8 at booklikes and elisa.saphier at librarything if you do hop over there. might want to export your stuff just in case things really go south here at goodreads - you know amazon will eventually only link to themselves, and maybe even ruin this site like they have with others they've bought (but they might let it just be a place to review amazon books and buy amazon books). if you've exported your data you can easily bring it over somewhere else if you decide to. i have a list of other sites, too, if you're interested in more.

also, librarything charges a nominal fee for more than 200 books but is giving a year free through tomorrow, because of the goodreads refugees. open an account and decide later about using it!

i'm keeping this page up for now, so as not to lose you all entirely.(less)

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Feb 23, 2013 Ensiform rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, historical, justice

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this novel set during the end of Tsarist Russia concerns the titular handyman, Yakov Bok, an agnostic Jew who leaves his village where he’s had nothing but personal and financial failure and tries his luck in Kiev. There in the big anti-Semitic city, Yakov poses as a goy Russian and becomes a brickyard foreman, not through deliberate machinations but a series of events and lies of omission which make this the easiest and safest course for him. But after a young boy...more Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this novel set during the end of Tsarist Russia concerns the titular handyman, Yakov Bok, an agnostic Jew who leaves his village where he’s had nothing but personal and financial failure and tries his luck in Kiev. There in the big anti-Semitic city, Yakov poses as a goy Russian and becomes a brickyard foreman, not through deliberate machinations but a series of events and lies of omission which make this the easiest and safest course for him. But after a young boy is brutally murdered in the region, the authorities seize on Yakov, a Jew living illegally under false pretenses, as their scapegoat and charge him with killing the boy for magical Jewish blood rituals. He sits imprisoned with little hope, though one or two fair-minded officials sympathize with the injustice of his arrest.

This is a powerful novel, and it is compelling reading because the eventual plight of Yakov is of such interest. In Malamud’s setting, the system and its drivers are not clever or all-seeing, merely thuggish, ignorant, and hypocritical. Though there are bits of circumstantial evidence that hurt Yakov’s credibility (he had previously chased the boy out of the brickyard for vandalism, he took in an old Jew who had been beaten and stanched his bloody head with his own shirt), basically the case against him is made up of whole cloth, invented baseless lies about him personally and the Jewish religion in general. This is particularly ironic and brutal for Yakov because, as noted, he doesn’t consider himself a religious Jew: “From birth a black horse had followed him, a Jewish nightmare. What was being a Jew but an everlasting curse? He was sick of their history, destiny, blood guilt.” One of the book’s most powerful and moving scenes is when Yakov is visited by his humble, God-fearing father-in-law, whom Yakov sends away, saying God is an invention and that he hates him in any case for killing Job’s children, “not to mention ten thousand pogroms.” The book’s purpose, I believe is to expose injustice and to exhort all fair-minded people, especially Jews, to work against it: “there’s no such thing as an unpolitical man, especially a Jew,” Yakov thinks to himself near the end of the book. “You can’t sit still and see yourself destroyed.” And yet, because Malamud has shown that the system is not just weighted against the oppressed but completely unrestrained by any duty to truth or even credibility, that it can manufacture and disseminate inventions, I wonder whether this moral works. What is there to fight, if facts don’t matter and lone voices are silenced? The novel ends on an ambiguous note, but where this scintilla of hope may come from seems unfounded given the rest of Yakov’s experiences. (less)

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Aug 14, 2012 Kenneth Duckworth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Yakov Bok is a Jew. A Jew living in Kiev in the last days of the Russian Empire. He is, by his own account, unconcerned with political matters. However, this is not possible for a Jew. One day a Christian boy from the neighborhood is found dead, and the authorities' eye of suspicion falls upon Bok, who is living illegally outside the Pale of Settlement. He is arrested an charged with the murder of the boy. His accusers, vehement anti-Semites, say he murdered the child in order to obtain blood to...more

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May 23, 2012 Rahel Admasu rated it 3 of 5 stars

Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer is a novel about one man’s struggle against injustice. Set in Russia during the height of anti-Semitism, this novel follows Yavok Bok’s fight to cling to the truth despite all odds. Originally from a stetl outside of Kiev, Yavok gathers his few belongings and migrates to Kiev, Russia to escape his past. Embarassed by his inability to produce a child and his wife’s infidelity, Yakov sets out to change his life’s path. He aspires to travel the world and learn from all t...more Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer is a novel about one man’s struggle against injustice. Set in Russia during the height of anti-Semitism, this novel follows Yavok Bok’s fight to cling to the truth despite all odds. Originally from a stetl outside of Kiev, Yavok gathers his few belongings and migrates to Kiev, Russia to escape his past. Embarassed by his inability to produce a child and his wife’s infidelity, Yakov sets out to change his life’s path. He aspires to travel the world and learn from all that it has to offer; however, he is disappointed to learn that life away from home is not all easy. In Kiev, he struggles to find work before he happens across Nikolai Maximovitch Lebedev, a wealthy member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. Out of desperation, Yakov begins working for him while residing in an anti- Jewish living area. While illegally residing in the anti- Jewish community, Yakov temporarily aids a hasidic Jew. When a young Russian boy is found drained of his blood, the Jewish community is automatically blamed for strategically murdering the boy in a sort of hate crime. It is at this point that Yakov is accused of murdering the young boy he had encountered after members of the Secret Police identify him as a Jew wrongfully living in that area. While imprisoned, Yavok begins his struggle to cling to his innocence--his truth--in spite of the guards’ coercions, manipulations, and abuses.
The Fixer is a compelling novel about the strength of the human spirit and its ability to overcome injustices. As the reader is taken on Yakov’s journey through the author’s purposeful manipulation of time through dreams, flashbacks, and lapses in consciousness. During his time in captivity, Yakov is continually faced with new obstacles to overcome. It is not until he learns that forgiveness and acceptance of his past will liberate him that he finally finds peace. As he finally walks to his trial in the novel’s closing pages, Yakov has reached a state of serenity as he accepts that he has effortlessly become a part history that he had tried so hard to evade.
Originally disinterested by the novel’s slow pace, my perception was altered as I learned that it was all part of the author’s message. I was able to enjoy this novel as a story of the power of courage, determination, and human resilience. Having recently read Albert Camus’ The Stranger, I was able to draw many parallels between the two novels’ common themes of injustice, confinement, and the general indifference of the universe. To experience a alternate interpretation of a similar theory, I would suggest reading The Stranger to those who enjoyed The Fixer. To those that specifically enjoyed the novel’s realism based on historical account, I would suggest Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand--the biography of a prisoner of war held captive for two and a half years at a Japanese internment camp--as a novel comparable to The Fixer.(less)

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Nov 06, 2011 Karen Codner rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

La lectura de este relato es solo para quienes tiene el coraje de soportar la crudeza, de sentir y de ver ante uno lo que fue el sufrimiento de muchos. El protagonista, "un reparador" que lejanamente logra ir mejorando el estado de las cosas, va en caída, los lectores nos damos cuenta de ello y él no.
Hubo algunas partes que se hicieron lentas, sobre todo al final del relato, por eso no le puse la quinta estrella.
Otro rasgo que me disgustó fue que en momentos era demasiado histórico y pedagógic...more

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Oct 11, 2011 Josh rated it 5 of 5 stars

There are a lot of great books where reading them feels like having your frontal lobe beaten. After reading a good chunk of a book like this, there's a discomfort in your jaw because you had it clenched the whole time. The Fixer was one of these books but I don't mean that as a criticism. It requires work, like a lot of worthwhile art. I prefer books that offer a pleasurable sensation--enlightenment in some non-cerebral way--but sometimes you just need to read through concrete. So. I read this t...more

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Aug 28, 2010 Agnes Mack rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, pulitzer

With the possible exception of Night by Elie Wiesel, The Fixer is the most powerful and affecting book I've ever read.

It tells the story of a Jew living in Russia ~1920. The Fixer is a man who has grown up in the Jewish ghetto and moves into the city of Kiev in an attempt to make a better life for himself.

He gets a job and all is going well until he runs across a man who is passed out, drunk, in the street. After he helps him to his home, the grateful man offers him a well paying job in his ware...more

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Jan 03, 2010 Nate's Bookgroup rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a hard one for me to get through. It's been a while since I've read a Russian author, mostly because I remember the cloudy viscous feeling I get whenever I read a story so thick with the horrible things people do to one another. This book reminded me of Tolstoy and Nabakov a little. Bernard Malamud, the author, is american, but the story takes place in the Ukraine just before the first world war. Yakov Bok is a poor small town handyman who gets caught up in a huge political maelstrom af...more

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Sep 20, 2011 Cruton rated it 2 of 5 stars

The story of Yakov Bok, a Russian peasant Jew from the country. After his wife is unable to conceive children they drift apart she runs away and after puttering around their village for a while longer Yakov decides that he has never had anything in this village so why is he bothering to stay? He packs up his meager belongings and moves to Kiev, saving a man passed out drunk face down in the snow. The man is a member of the Black Hundreds (an anti-Semitic group) but Yakov saves him anyway. Gettin...more The story of Yakov Bok, a Russian peasant Jew from the country. After his wife is unable to conceive children they drift apart she runs away and after puttering around their village for a while longer Yakov decides that he has never had anything in this village so why is he bothering to stay? He packs up his meager belongings and moves to Kiev, saving a man passed out drunk face down in the snow. The man is a member of the Black Hundreds (an anti-Semitic group) but Yakov saves him anyway. Getting him home the man offers Yakov a job as a foreman in his brick factory. Problem being that it would require that Yakov live in a district forbidden to Jews but after some internal debate Yakov takes the Job. The workers there are on the take and stealing bricks and resent Yakov coming in to stop them. Yakov also helps an old hasidic Jew and it is likely that the head of the workers caught him doing so. Thus when a boy is found murdered a week or two later Yakov is arrested revealed to be a Jew and taken to prison where he sits for at least two years. The novel ends with Yakov finally heading to court.
Initially it confused me why this book had won a pulitzer, having read it I can see maybe how it did, I just have to say it must have spoken louder to past generations than it did to me.
What is remarkable is the real feeling of time and imprisonment the novel gives you. The author does an exceptional job of conveying the sheer monotony of time to the reader which sounds intensely boring but which the author somehow renders readable. Indeed we even share the same distorted perception of time Yakov has as we go in and out of his prison hallucinations (whether through dreaming or because he was beaten unconscious).
I also found it interesting as a picture of how incredibly backward Russia was. I admit I know little more about Russia than your average American in that communism was stupid, they were the baddies in the Cold war, and that originally on the side of the Germans in the WWII and got betrayed by them losing unfathomable numbers of men fighting them off.
A complaint however is that Yakov was clearly the christ figure here. Sure it takes prison to bring it out but he forgives his wife who returns and even claims the son she had while away as his own so that he won't be a bastard. He refuses several attempts of the Tsar to get Yakov to fold by offering to spirit him out of the country in return for an admission of guilt. With the hell that Yakov went through I find it rather implausible that anyone would refuse their freedom for this deal no matter how principled they started out. But perhaps I am not accurately accounting for Russian stubbornness.
The antisemitism, the scary thing of it all is that I'm not sure that the author blows it out of proportion. Goes to show you how far down the road to insanity you can go as a culture when you ignore the facts and reason.
In the end an interesting book, worth reading if you've got some time and are in between books.(less)

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Jan 07, 2012 Andi rated it 5 of 5 stars

I had never heard of this award-winning 1966 classic, but I picked up The Fixer from my favourite bookstore, BMV, on the basis of Jonathan Safron Foer's forward. Once again, Foer got it right: The Fixer did not disappoint. It was a powerful, albeit difficult book to read.

The Fixer is the story of a poor Jewish handyman in Tzarist Russia who is framed for the murder of a Christian child. He is jailed awaiting trial, and subjected to the most gruesome and humiliating conditions imaginable.

While...more

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Aug 25, 2012 Benjamin Lettuce Treuhaft rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Fixer is the fictional, in fact hallucinogenic, 1910 Kiev prison diary of a Jew framed on a murder charge then toyed with and tortured by his Russian keepers - the way I imagine millions of African Americans in the American prison system have been fucked with since the end of slavery.

Having attended a Great Books college for a minute in the 60s and failed to read one cover to cover, my aversion to such Books is such that had I known that this was one I would probably not have started it. I...more

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Mar 23, 2011 Khris Sellin rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'd never heard of this book and not sure I would've ever chosen to read it on my own but it was the March pick for our Pulitzer Prize book club. Amazingly, it is based on a true story, set in the Ukraine in the early 1900s. Yakov Bok, a carpenter, or "fixer," leaves his shtetl in search of a better life after his wife runs off with another man. He is Jewish by origin but has never been a religious man. He's chosen to stay away from religion and politics and has mostly kept to himself his whole...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Mark Stephenson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Coming from my background, Jesus Christ and Christianity evoke primarily positive connotations but I can certainly understand after reading this masterfully executed retelling of real events which occurred in the final years of Tsar Nicholas the Second's rule why many, like Yakov Bok, this novel's protagonist, have "from childhood feared Jesus Christ, as stranger, apostate, mysterious enemy of the Jews".I don't suppose I've ever read a more effective illustration of the perniciousness of civil d...more

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Jun 01, 2009 Sara rated it 1 of 5 stars

I bought this book in college and it's been sitting on my shelf unopened until last week. This novel was written well, and it was based on a true incident where a Jewish man was tried and convicted of murdering a Russian boy who was actually killed by his own mother. It was set in Russia during the reign of the last zsar (1905-ish), at a time of intense anti-semitic hatred--it reminded me of Fiddler on the Roof, but I haven't checked to see if it's the same time. Yakov is an ironic Christ figure...more

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Mar 17, 2013 Bonnie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: pulitzer-prize-winners

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The Fixer provides a fictionalized version of the Beilis case. Menahem Mendel Beilis was a Jew unjustly imprisoned in Tsarist Russia. The "Beilis trial" of 1913 caused an international uproar and Russia backed down in the face of world indignation.

The book was adapted into a 1968 film of the same name starring Alan Bates (Yakov Bok) who received an Oscar nomination.

When The Fixer was first published, Beilis’s son David Beilis wrote to Malamud, complaining both that Malamud had plagiarized from B...more

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Feb 16, 2012 Ted rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, lit-american

The is a Pulitzer prize winning novel. I found it a very depressing read. It tells a story that, in its historical setting, is believable. The main character is a victim of circumstances, for which we feel sympathy, and even horror when we reflect on the fate that befalls men. But he is not actually very likable. All of these things are good, or at worst, not bad.

I just skimmed through the last 60 pages of the book, perhaps I will change my mind about it at some point. But for now, the one thin...more

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Apr 08, 2011 Nathaniel Wyckoff rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Fixer is probably my all-time favorite novel. It is best described by the adjective "powerful." I read it as part of a college course, in 1995, and to this day there's hardly a week in which I don't think of it. Malamud brilliantly uses the real-life case of Mendel Beilis, falsely accused of the anti-Semitic blood libel in 1911 or 1912 in Russia, as a historical backdrop. Beilis is replaced by a flawed but idealistic man named Yaakov Bok, a Jew with a tenuous connection to Judaism. He is int...more

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Oct 30, 2010 Renee rated it 5 of 5 stars

Brilliant and harrowing . . . Historical reality combined with fictional skill, all this and yet so painful to read at times, I found myself glossing over words and sentences.
The book center's around handyman ("the fixer") Yakov Bok's inner struggle with himself as with the enormous injustice of Kiev, and the pure evil and prejudice of local officials who are looking for a Jewish scapegoat to make an example of by his false imprisonment.

At the end of the novel Yakov has become what he thought he...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Elalma rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: righe

E� un romanzo bellissimo, anche se apparentemente diverso dagli altri libri di Malamud, un po� per l�ambientazione, un po� per il luogo cos� soffocante e angusto in cui si svolge, quasi kafkiano. Ma � sempre quel senso di sconfitta che per� non cela la dignit� umana a essere narrato. Pur nella profonda tristezza, infatti, nell�ingiustizia, nell�oppressione, l�Uomo non risulta annichilito n� perde se stesso, come invece sappiamo avviene in queste circostanze, grazie a Primo Levi o Boris Pahor. Ri...more

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Oct 22, 2009 Matt rated it 3 of 5 stars

This should be required reading for... someone. Perhaps all the taxpayers shoving punishment, prisons, punishment, prisons down the world's throat. For depicting an imprisonment in detail, letting time affect the narrative as it affects the character, and accomplishing that in an interesting way, The Fixer is pretty impressive. And every three or so pages there is a sentence that keeps you reading, a little zing. Otherwise, the book wasn't like trudging uphill, but it wasn't like the momentum...more

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Jan 22, 2013 Roxanne Russell rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: pulitzer-fiction

The back cover of the the tiny font Penguin edition I read says from "Independent" "The Fixer deserves to rank alongside the great Jewish-American novels of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth" My first reaction to this was to think it is shame that Bellow & Roth not respected as ethnicity neutral great novelists, and after reading The Fixer, I think it is a shame Malamud is not congratulated for such an accomplishment in the style of Russian literature rather than American. This philosophically cha...more

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Aug 25, 2011 KW in CT rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: pulitzers-read

I read this book as part of my Pulitzer project. It is about a falsely accused Jew in early 1900s Russia.

This book is very well written and provocative. I found it somewhat tedious and arduous, but that is the point. I think the author brilliantly evoked the frustrations of the main character. While reading it, I felt as though i kept being strung along, waiting for something to happen. At the end it occurred to me that that was likely the author's intent.

PS This novel is based on a true story....more

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About Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud was an author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford. His 1966 novel The Fixer, about antisemitism in Tsarist Russia, won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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Quotes from The Fixer

“Where to look if you've lost your mind?” — 104 people liked it

“You could not pity anything if you weren't a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.” — 5 people liked it

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