

The Assistant
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780374504847
Publication Date: 07/07/2003
Age Range: 14-18 years
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
Choose options


The Assistant
Sale price$18.00
New Releases
How to Be Free: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life's Hidden Prisons
Shaka Senghor
Hardcover
Sale price$30.00
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
Stephen Greenblatt
Hardcover
Sale price$31.99
All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation (Oprah's Book Club)
Elizabeth Gilbert
Hardcover
Sale price$35.00