DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

The Natural

Bernard Malamud author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:6th Jun '02

Should be back in stock very soon

The Natural cover

A baseball player struggling with a god-given gift and human passions is given a second chance to become what he always dreamed he could be: the best there ever was.

This is a book about heroism - of sorts. He could become one of the great ones of the game, a player unmatched in his time - a hero. But his first hard-won big chance ends violently, at the hands of a crazy girl, and then it is years before he gets another shot.This is a book about heroism - of sorts. Roy Hobbs has an immense natural gift for playing baseball. He could become one of the great ones of the game, a player unmatched in his time - a hero. But his first hard-won big chance ends violently, at the hands of a crazy girl, and then it is years before he gets another shot. At last, in a few short seasons, or never, he must achieve the towering reputation that he feels is his right.

A rich original of the first rank -- Saul Bellow
One of the best writers in the English language... His work embeds itself into one's consciousness and refuses to be dislodged * Sunday Times *
The Natural by Bernard Malamud shows the agony, destruction and pathos that come often with great sports talent -- Sid Waddell, sports commentator * Independent *
This book established that we could have a serious adult baseball novel by playing with the parallels between mythical elements in the game and mythical elements in literature * Chicago Tribune *
Bernard Malamud's The Natural that still leads the field [for novels about baseball]. It is one of the landmarks of a period in US fiction when Jewish novelists dominated the scene with work of the highest ambition * Metro *

ISBN: 9780099437024

Dimensions: 198mm x 130mm x 15mm

Weight: 172g

240 pages