The Fixer (Pulitzer Prize 1967)

305 pp. Green full leather, gilt titles and decorations, all edges gilt, silk moire endpapers, ribbon marker bound in. Two-panel illustration preceding title page and full-page illustrations in text from woodcuts by Frances Jetter. "A classic that won Malamud both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, 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, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young Russian boy. Bok leaves his village to try his luck in Kiev, and after denying his Jewish identity, finds himself working for a member of the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds Society. When the boy is found nearly drained of blood in a cave, the Black Hundreds accuse the Jews of ritual murder. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit." "The Fixer is a 1968 film based on the 1966 semi-biographical novel by Bernard Malamud about a Jew, Menahem Mendel Beilis, in Tsarist Russia who was unjustly imprisoned and the notorious trial that ensued. The film stars Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde, Georgia Brown, Hugh Griffith, Elizabeth Hartman, Ian Holm, David Opatoshu and David Warner. It was directed by John Frankenheimer and adapted from Malamud's novel by Dalton Trumbo. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Alan Bates)."