Dubin's Lives

Dubin's Lives (1979) us a compassionate, wry commedia, a novel described by Thomas Mallon in his introduction as "a nervy, even brave, book" whose reissue "should extend not only Malamud's readership but also our thoughts about the biographer's art."

Its protagonist is one of Malamud's finest characters: prizewinning biographer William Dubin, who learns, or so he thinks, from the lives of others—his subjects, his wife, his children, his lover. Now in later middle age, he seeks for the first time his own secret self, and the obsession of biography is supplanted by the obsession of love. Dubin's Lives is a rich, subtle book, as well as a moving tale of love and marriage.