Bernard Malamud’s 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is The Fixer.
Published in 1966, the novel follows Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman and printer in Kiev who is falsely accused of murdering a Christian boy. He is imprisoned without trial and subjected to antisemitic persecution by officials of the Russian Empire.
The story is set around 1911 and draws on the historical Beilis affair, in which Menahem Mendel Beilis was accused of ritual murder in Kiev. Malamud transforms that case into a fictional examination of injustice, endurance, and moral freedom.
The Fixer won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award. It is distinct from Malamud’s earlier novel The Assistant, which also addresses Jewish identity and hardship but does not center on the Beilis-inspired imprisonment.