Description

Book Synopsis

The Assistant, Bernard Malamud''s second novel, originally published in 1957, is the story of Morris Bober, a grocer in postwar Brooklyn, who wants better for himself and his family. First two robbers appear and hold him up; then things take a turn for the better when broken-nosed Frank Alpine becomes his assistant. But there are complications: Frank, whose reaction to Jews is ambivalent, falls in love with Helen Bober; at the same time he begins to steal from the store.

Like Malamud''s best stories, this novel unerringly evokes an immigrant world of cramped circumstances and great expectations. Malamud defined the immigrant experience in a way that has proven vital for several generations of writers.

His best novel . . . The Assistant is as tightly written as a prose poem. --Morris Dickstein in Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction 1945-1970

The Assistant

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    A Paperback by Bernard Malamud, Jonathan Rosen

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      Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
      Publication Date: Publication Date: 7/7/2003 12:00:00 AM
      ISBN13: 9780374504847, 978-0374504847
      ISBN10: 0374504849

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      The Assistant, Bernard Malamud''s second novel, originally published in 1957, is the story of Morris Bober, a grocer in postwar Brooklyn, who wants better for himself and his family. First two robbers appear and hold him up; then things take a turn for the better when broken-nosed Frank Alpine becomes his assistant. But there are complications: Frank, whose reaction to Jews is ambivalent, falls in love with Helen Bober; at the same time he begins to steal from the store.

      Like Malamud''s best stories, this novel unerringly evokes an immigrant world of cramped circumstances and great expectations. Malamud defined the immigrant experience in a way that has proven vital for several generations of writers.

      His best novel . . . The Assistant is as tightly written as a prose poem. --Morris Dickstein in Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction 1945-1970

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