Bernard Malamud nám ve svém románu znovu ukazuje, že špína a utrpení sice člověka deptají, ale zároveň polidšťují a očišťují.

Many of the characters in these short stories are Jewish, but through the author's gentle exploration of their predicaments, he illuminates a region that is common to everyone.

Roy Hobbs, who knows himself to be - potentially - the greatest baseball player ever, has his career altered when a mad woman puts a violent end to his first attempt to join the league. Years later, at an age when most players retire, he tries, once again, to realize his lifetime's ambition.

Kiev, 1911. When a twelve-year-old Russian boy is found stabbed to death, his body drained of blood, the accusation of ritual murder is levelled at the Jews. Yakov Bok - a handyman hiding his Jewish identity from his anti-Semitic employer - is first outed and blamed. Arrested and imprisoned, Bok refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit. What becomes of this man under pressure, for whom acquittal is made to seem as hopeless as conviction, is the subject of a terrifying masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction.