This book has fallen apart in my hands as I’ve read. And that’s no metaphor. It lies here in pieces on my desk as I review it, something that happens quite often with books I pick up from random locations here in Asia.

I found my coverless copy of The Fixer by Bernard Malamud in a coffee shop in Laos and picked it up because I thought it might be a spy novel, perhaps the story of the Mossad working in Russia with a “fixer” at the center of it. It is none of these things, of course, yet the story of this poor, falsely accused Jew still gripped me.

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Brief Summary of The Fixer

The story follows the Jewish man, Yakov Bok, a poor and jobless “fixer” or repairman fleeing his village for a better life in Kiev. Once there, his luck appears to change for the better, when he rescues a drunk man from suffocation in the snow. Although this man is a member of the extreme antisemitic group The Black One Hundreds, he’s unaware that Yakov (now using an assumed Russian name) is Jewish, and thus entrusts him with odd jobs that lead to even greater responsibilities in his brickworks—which happen to reside in a Jew-free part of town.

When a twelve-year-old boy is found murdered nearby, Yakov is arrested, discovered to be a Jew in hiding, and is—for the remainder of the book—held in jails and prisons and solitary confinements awaiting a trial that might never come. While the ending leaves much to be desired, I remained gripped until the final page and fully understand why this story won the Pulitzer.

Controversy Whilst I Read

Because I have been loosely following on X the degeneration of some “Christian” Conservatives into antisemitic rhetoric (led by the likes of Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson), my ears have been pricked to the dangers of history repeating itself. Pogroms and gas chambers may not be in our near-near future, but the way things sound online, they might be in the semi-near future. It’s shocking even to admit that’s a possibility, but the internet is a dark, dark place—and we’re all far better off keeping away from it…other than for purposes of book reviews, of course.

I write all of that to say that I quoted the following passage The Fixer on X as a warning against growing antisemitism—that it sounds a whole lot like the crap Candace Owens has been recently peddling:

“My dear children,” said the priest to the Russians, winging his dry hands, “if the bowels of the earth were to open to reveal the population of human dead since the beginning of the world, you should be astonished to see how many innocent Christian children among them have been tortured to death by Christ-hating Jews.” (116-117)

In response, someone noted a piece of controversy of which I hadn’t been aware: that author Bernard Malamud had been accused of plagiarizing this entire story from the memoirs of one Mendel Beilis. Mendel’s grandson and co-authors have republished his memoir with their evidences of plagiarism in the book Blood Libel: The Life and Memory of Mendel Beilis. While I haven’t yet read this book, I find the accusation fascinating and look forward to reading it someday.

Fantastic Writing, Despite the Controversy

Before I read that other book, however, I must note that even if Bernard Malamud stole the plot of this story (which isn’t plagiarism in the strictest sense, just bad form), he could not have stolen from anywhere else his own flair for writing. Throughout this book, I have highlighted many lines that capture deep truths in pithy statements. I share here just a handful.

There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them. (10)

Being born a Jew meant being vulnerable to history, including its worst errors. (138)

When one had nothing to do the worst thing to have was an endless supply of minutes. It was like pouring nothing into a million little bottles. (192)

In chains all that was left of freedom was life, just existence; but to exist without choice was the same as death. (242-243)

Keep in mind that the purpose of freedom is to create it for others. (291)

A Book of Philosophy? A Book of Religion?

Throughout the early pages of The Fixer, we find Yakov the atheist feasting on the works of Spinoza, even discussing such philosophy with a Russian official. When I came upon these passages (within the first 100 pages or so) I worried that perhaps I was reading yet another philosophical diatribe posing as a “novel”—like The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky or (worse) The Brothers Karamazov. I had my fingers ready to shut it if that were so, but thankfully, these discussions were nothing but a foundation for the events that followed.

Yakov said of himself:

I’m a half-ignorant man, and the other half is half-educated. (67)

Throughout this book, we live inside Yakov’s quarter-educated mind as he suffers the torments of his captors, their inhumane treatment and tortures while sitting in prison, all the while trying to figure out why in the world they’re happening. While at times he finds pleasure in reading pages torn from a Hebrew Scriptures—and even begins memorizing passages from the New Testament—Yakov remains a strong, committed atheist who cannot fathom a God who would allow such suffering in the world. And of course, he’s not alone in that sentiment, because the vengeful, distant, angry god that people blame for all the world’s suffering is the god of tradition, not the true God of the Bible—though that is a discussion for another day.

Why Suicide Was Never the Answer

But this hopeless atheism that permeates the pages of this book led me to wonder: If one doesn’t believe in God and yet finds him in these miserable, deaths-door situations, then why not just kill oneself and be done with it all? What in the world is there to hope for, if after death one simply ceases to exist?

Yakov himself battles these thoughts while in the midst of contemplating suicide, saying at one point :

What do I get by dying, outside of release from pain? What have I earned if a single Jew dies because I did? Suffering I can gladly live without, I hate the taste of it, but if I must suffer let it be for something. (247-248)

The longer I read, the more I understood her perspectve. It wasn’t so much self-preservation that kept Yakov from taking his own life midst the pains of his constant torment—it was the thought of what else would happen to the other Jews if his published legacy ended with: “Jew Kills Himself from Guilt.” This potentiality mattered to Yakov, even though he believed that death was the end of suffering, the end of existence. Death is still death, yet he couldn’t handle being blamed even in memory for bringing more death upon other fellow Jews who themselves didn’t want it like might have.

This fear of reprisal against the Jews was made clear one day by Warden Grubeshov’s gleeful, despicable admission to Yakov in the privacy of his chambers:

My father once described to me an incident of a synagogue cellar full of Jews, men and women, who attempted to hide from the Cossacks during a raid on their village. The sergeant ordered them to come up one by one and at first none of them stirred, but then a few came up the steps holding their arms over their heads. This did do them not the least good as they were clubbed to death with rifle butts. The rest of them, though they were ike herrings sstuck together in a stinking barrel, weould not move although they had been warned it would go worse with them. And so it did. The impatient Cossacks rushed into the cellar, bayoneting and shooting every last Jew. Those who were dragged out still alive were lkater thrown from speeding trains. A few, beginning with their benzine-soaked beards, were burned alive, and some of the women were droped in their underclothes into wells to drown. You can take my word for it that in less than a week after your trial, there will be a quarter-million fewer Zhidy in the Pale.” (274-275)

Conclusion

In closing, I’d like to note three of my favorite lines of geography—especially with Ukraine still constantly in the news—lines fit for the a classic edition of Lonely Planet:

• Russia is a complex, long-suffering, ignorant, torn and helpless nation. In one sense we are all prisoners here. (156)
• Kiev. It’s a dangerous city full of churches and anti-Semites. (6)
• Kiev, you understand, is a medieval city full of wild superstition and mysticism. (278)

You can tell from the quotations I’ve shared in this review that this is by no means a joyful book. Neither is this a book for the general Christian audience. Instead, it’s a godless book, fit with heavy language and the occasional inappropriate scene. Yet despite all of this, it’s informative and moving—a powerful description of human suffering from inside the mind of an atheist—quite similar, in fact, to The Stranger by Albert Camus (1946).

It’s not something that everyone needs to read, but if you’re drawn to books on the Holocaust or the histories of Russia or Jews—or to books on depression and pain—then it’s definitely one to add to your must-read pile.

©2026 E.T.