The Assistant A Novel

<p><i>The Assistant</i>, Bernard Malamud's second novel, originally published in 1957, is the story of Morris Bober, a grocer in postwar Brooklyn, who "wants better" for himself and his family. First two robbers appear and hold him up; then things take a turn for the better when broken-nosed Frank Alpine becomes his assistant. But there are complications: Frank, whose reaction to Jews is ambivalent, falls in love with Helen Bober; at the same time he begins to steal from the store.<br><br>Like Malamud's best stories, this novel unerringly evokes an immigrant world of cramped circumstances and great expectations. Malamud defined the immigrant experience in a way that has proven vital for several generations of writers.<br><br>"His best novel . . . <i>The Assistant</i> is as tightly written as a prose poem." --Morris Dickstein in <i>Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction 1945-1970</i></p>