Bernard Malamud

First published in 1971, The Tenants is a ruthlessly funny dissection of a relationship of profound unease and mutual destruction. The last remaining tenant in a condemned New York tenement, Harry Lesser struggles against rising panic and escalating odds to complete the novel he started ten years earlier. Then he stumbles on a black man, sitting typing in one of...

The Magic Barrel offers an experience akin to a rite of initiation. Jhumpa Lahiri describes it as stories that settled swiftly and deeply into her consciousness, stating that she cannot believe there was ever a time she had not read them. A matchmaker finds love for a would-be rabbi; a shopkeeper dies because he cannot afford a doctor; a little...