The Fixer by Bernard Malamud is, so far, a great book. The protagonist, Yakov Bok, unfortunately couldn’t find any jobs in his city and his wife didn’t want to stay with him. Yakov felt like he failed in the world. So, Yakov moved into an anti-semitic city in hopes of finding a better life. Yakov moving into this city was probably the worst decision to possibly make since he was a Russian Jew. That is a short summary of what I’ve read so far. It’s not much, but I do know that later in the book, Yakov Bol will be put in prison and would be put on trial due to the false accusation of murdering a child.
This story is based off of a real story, but the person that got accused was a Russian Jew named Mendel Belies, not Yakov Bok. He did indeed get put on trial over the false accusation of killing a Christian child. He was accused of this simply because he was Jewish. This trial is infamously called the Beiles Trial or the Beiles Affair and it took place in 1913, a time when anti-semitism was becoming popular in Russia.
Wow! The Fixer seems like an extremely interesting book! I understand that he is facing extreme prejudice for being a Russian Jew in the early 1900s; however, I wonder if that has anything to do with the title of the book? Could it be because Yakov Bok’s Trial was possibly rigged for him to fail by some individual (The Fixer) or because someone else may save Yakov from his false accusation by fixing the broken trial? Nevertheless, thank you for posting and for sparking my curiosity about The Fixer! 🙂