"Why are you hiding here?”: Counter-Narrating Antisemitic Master-Narratives in Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer

Auteurs-es

  • Howard Sklar University of Helsinki

Mots-clés :

blood libel, antisemitism, master-narrative, counter-narrative, Bernard Malamud

Résumé

When Mendel Beilis, a Jew, was accused of having murdered a Christian child in Kyiv in 1911, the allegations drew on centuries-old “blood libel” legends, dating back to the Middle Ages, in which Jews purportedly sacrificed Christian children for ritual purposes. While Beilis eventually was acquitted of the charges, the master-narratives that drove them have proved resistant to counter-narration. Bernard Malamud’s 1966 novel The Fixer, by fictionally attempting to retell Beilis’s story through the character of Yakov Bok, provides a “critical reinterpretation […] of dominant narrative models” (Meretoja 2021)—a powerful counter-narrative, not only to the specific tale of Beilis, but also to the longer-standing claims that continue to buttress antisemitism.

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Publié-e

2024-12-13

Comment citer

Sklar, H. (2024). "Why are you hiding here?”: Counter-Narrating Antisemitic Master-Narratives in Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer. Narrative Works, 13(1), 108–126. Consulté à l’adresse https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/NW/article/view/34451