The Fixer (Bernard Malamud, 1966)

A ne'er-do-well "fixer" (someone who makes a living, sort of, as a handyman or doing small repairs) reluctantly moves from the shtetl - embarrassed that wife left him, looking for change - to Kiev.  Early 20th century.  Fixer uneducated but finds an interest in reading, picks up quite a bit of learning here and there (Spinoza).  Chain of circumstances leads him to reside and work, under a false name, in an area forbidden to Jews.  Christian child is murdered with multiple stab wounds; the fixer is arrested for ritual murder.

Malamud wins Pulitzer Prize for fiction for this novel.  I liked it.  Consistent with discussion of anti-Semitism in Russia as discussed in this review of the Romanov dynasty.  Belief in things like the forged "Protocols" even among the supposedly educated upper classes - in the 20th century.

I read that Malamud considered writing a novel about the Dreyfus affair (novel form here; history focus here) - certainly plenty of overlapping elements - but settled on this instead.  Prejudice, maltreatment in prison, entrenched institutional forces, false witnesses, emerging community support.  (Malamud's novel is based, pretty closely as I understand it, on a true story.)

Author has an interesting way of describing what the protagonist felt while imprisoned for a prolonged period awaiting indictment and trial.  Wife visits him in prison.  Father-in-law (Shmuel).  Conversations with an honest investigator, and later with his lawyer - author uses these as devices to lay out some history on Russian pogroms.

262 pp in this edition.