The Tenants
A Novel
ISBN10: 0374521026
ISBN13: 9780374521028
Trade Paperback
256 Pages
$21.00
CA$28.50
In The Tenants (1971), Bernard Malamud brought his unerring sense of modern urban life to bear on the conflict between blacks and Jews then inflaming his native Brooklyn. The sole tenant in a run-down tenement, Henry Lesser is struggling to finish a novel, but his solitary pursuit of the sublime grows complicated when Willie Spearmint, a black writer ambivalent toward Jews, moves into the building. Henry and Willie are artistic rivals and unwilling neighbors, and their uneasy peace is disturbed by the presence of Willie's white girlfriend, Irene, and the landlord Levenspiel's attempt to evict both men and demolish the building. This novel's conflict, current then, is perennial now; it reveals the slippery nature of the human condition, and the capacity for violence and undoing.
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"The Tenants marks a turning point in the history of American letters . . . Not only a fascinating book, but a timely one as well."—From the Introduction by Aleksandar Hemon
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BOOK EXCERPTS
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The Tenants
LESSER CATCHING SIGHT OF HIMSELF in his lonely glass wakes to finish his book. He smelled the living earth in the dead of winter. In the distance mournful blasts of a vessel departing the harbor. Ah, if I could go where...