The Tenants
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good , price clipped
Markings: No markings
A searing work of literary fiction, The Tenants chronicles the volatile relationship between two writers — Harry Lesser, a Jewish American struggling to finish his third novel, and Willie Spearmint, a Black militant who moves into Lesser's condemned tenement building — as their creative ambitions and personal animosities spiral toward a devastating collision. Bernard Malamud constructs a tense, claustrophobic narrative that illustrates how art, race, and identity can become weapons as much as lifelines, with each man simultaneously inspiring and destroying the other. The novel argues that the act of writing is inseparable from the writer's humanity, and that the failure to truly see another person carries catastrophic consequences. Written with Malamud's characteristic moral urgency and spare, precise prose, the story presents a haunting meditation on artistic obsession, racial tension in 1970s America, and the tragic impossibility of connection across a deeply divided society. The Tenants stands as one of Malamud's most daring and uncompromising works, leaving readers with an ambiguous, gut-punch of an ending that resonates long after the final page.
Author: Bernard Malamud
Format: Hardback
Published: 1972, Eyre Methuen London
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good , price clipped
Markings: No markings
A searing work of literary fiction, The Tenants chronicles the volatile relationship between two writers — Harry Lesser, a Jewish American struggling to finish his third novel, and Willie Spearmint, a Black militant who moves into Lesser's condemned tenement building — as their creative ambitions and personal animosities spiral toward a devastating collision. Bernard Malamud constructs a tense, claustrophobic narrative that illustrates how art, race, and identity can become weapons as much as lifelines, with each man simultaneously inspiring and destroying the other. The novel argues that the act of writing is inseparable from the writer's humanity, and that the failure to truly see another person carries catastrophic consequences. Written with Malamud's characteristic moral urgency and spare, precise prose, the story presents a haunting meditation on artistic obsession, racial tension in 1970s America, and the tragic impossibility of connection across a deeply divided society. The Tenants stands as one of Malamud's most daring and uncompromising works, leaving readers with an ambiguous, gut-punch of an ending that resonates long after the final page.