Bernard Mala­mud (1914−1986) was the author of such acclaimed nov­els as The Nat­ur­al and The Assis­tant and a pro­lif­ic mas­ter of the short sto­ry. His first short sto­ry col­lec­tion, The Mag­ic Bar­rel, won the Nation­al Book Award, and his 1966 nov­el, The Fix­er, about anti­semitism in Tsarist Rus­sia, won both the Nation­al Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1988, the annu­al PEN/​Malamud award was cre­at­ed in his hon­or to rec­og­nize excel­lence in the art of the short story.