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From our earliest reading experiences, we are presented with stories addressing the themes of ethnic strife and systemic hatred � heck, the Bible is filled with them � and while the backdrops and parties may change, certain populations seem nevertheless singularly cursed, especially the Jews. Horrific notions about holocausts, pogroms and genocide are forever stitched into Jewish history and identity and serve as the dramatic core of some of the world’s greatest literature. The Fixer, which is based on a true story, concerns the fate of Yakov Bok, a Russian Jew wrongly accused of murdering a Christian child in the early 1900s. Bok, a barely educated handyman and an atheist, is subjected to the most vile and degrading torture during his imprisonment, where he suffers for his own society’s hatred of his kind. Heavy with dread and doom, it both depicts and elicits a sense of rage born of impotence against such hate. Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1966, it certainly deserves its place among the classics of its genre, which for me include Sophie’s Choice and American Pastoral. Before this, the only other book I’d read by Malamud was The Natural, in the 1980s, and all these years later I remember how easily and naturally that story flowed. For all its horror, this one does too, and though it was tough at times to keep on reading, it’s a brilliant lesson in storytelling. In the past few years it has been targeted by book banners in the U.S., which I hope encourages more people to read it.