INSCRIBED BY MALAMUD

MALAMUD, Bernard. The Assistant. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, (1967). Octavo, original half black cloth, original dust jacket. $1800.

First edition, later printing, inscribed: “To Ruth, with affection. Bernard Malamud."

"Here Malamud develops the theme of spiritual conversion in flawless form" (Vinson, 876). "It is the lucidity of this story that makes it distinctive and that makes Mr. Malamud's vision shine simply throughout the stumblings and strugglings… All is kept simple, real, basic; there is the rightness that permeates this book. Yet around the simplicity of it there gathers and grows in the mind of the reader a sense of values and destinies and large truths—there is this mysterious accretion that contributes weight and size and beauty to The Assistant (New York Times). The first edition was published in 1957; this seventh printing was published in 1967.

Book about-fine, with only faint foxing to endpapers. Dust jacket extremely good, with slight foxing, a bit of toning, and light wear mainly to extremities. A desirable inscribed copy.