Dubin's Lives A Novel

With a new introduction by Thomas Mallon Dubin's Lives(1979) is a compassionate and wry commedia, a book praised by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt inThe New York Timesas Malamud's "best novel sinceThe Assistant. Possibly, it is the best he has written of all." Its protagonist is one of Malamud's finest characters; prize-winning biographer William Dubin, who learns from lives, or thinks he does: those he writes, those he shares, the life he lives. Now in his later middle age, he seeks his own secret self, and the obsession of biography is supplanted by the obsession of love--love for a woman half is age, who has sought an understanding of her life through his books.Dubin's Livesis a rich, subtle book, as well as a moving tale of love and marriage.

Bernard Malamud (1914-86) wrote eight novels; he won the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for The Fixer, and the National Book Award for The Magic Barrel, a collection of stories. Born in Brooklyn, he taught for many years at Bennington College in Vermont.

"Dubin's Lives, for my money, is certainly Malamud's best novel since The Assistant. Possibly, it is the best he has written of all."
--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times