Bernard Malamud Reading “The Mourners” from The Magic Barrel
From Great American Authors Read from Their Works, Volume 2Bernard Malamud
Audio only
Length16m
About this audiobook
"The Mourners" comes from Malamud's National Book Award–winning collection, The Magic Barrel, about poor immigrant Jews—grocers, tailors, janitors, cobblers—whose suffering transcends the particular to become universal. Set in a cheap rooming house whose landlord and janitor join forces to evict a poor and aged Jewish tenant, the story ends with Gruber, the landlord, morally transformed by the sight of his tenant's misery. As compassion replaces cruelty, the two men mourn together. In Malamud's reading, the sudden descent of grace on the adversaries emerges with poignant force.
Bernard Malamud
(1914–1986) was an American author of novels and short stories. Born in
Brooklyn and educated at Columbia University, he was one of the great American
Jewish authors of the twentieth century. His 1966 novel The Fixer, about anti-Semitism in czarist Russia, won both the
National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He also authored many short
stories, winning a National Book Award for his collection The Magic Barrel. He was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction in 183. He taught English at Oregon State University
from 1949 to 1961.View all by Bernard Malamud
