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      The Natural

      by Bernard Malamud
      Published
      Jan 1973
      Main Genre
      General Fiction General Fiction
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      About This Book

      The classical novel (and basis for the acclaimed film starring Robert Redford) now in a new edition

      Introduction by Kevin Baker

      The Natural, Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is also the first—and some would say still the best—novel ever written about baseball.

      In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material—the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era—and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. Four decades later, Alfred Kazin's comment still holds true: "Malamud has done something which—now that he has done it!—looks as if we have been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology."

      Genres & Themes

      Genres

      General Fiction

      Subgenres

      Literary

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      Paperback

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      Sep 1978 Pocket ISBN 0671826301
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      Jul 1980 Avon ISBN 0380682397
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      Dec 1993 Avon ISBN 0380720841
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      Aug 1995 Avon ISBN 0380506092
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      Jan 2000 HarperPerennial ISBN 0060958294
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      Jun 2002 Vintage (UK) ISBN 0099437023
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      Jul 2003 Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0374502005
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      Hardcover

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      First Edition Jan 1973 Pocket ISBN 0671782738
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      Dec 1961 Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0374219605
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      Jan 1980 Turtleback Books ISBN 0606216073
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      Jan 1980 Time Life Medical ISBN 0809435934
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      Jan 1980 Time Life Medical ISBN 0809435942
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      Aug 1995 Turtleback Books ISBN 0606016880
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      Jul 2003 Turtleback Books ISBN 0613694317
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      Aug 2003 Perfection Learning ISBN 0812473108
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      eBook

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      Jul 2003 Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN B006CQ8IGE
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      Jul 2003 Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 146680503X
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      Aug 2014 SparkNotes ISBN B0759ZKJ8B
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      Aug 2017 Vintage ISBN 1446419126
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      Audio

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      Brilliance Audio ISBN 1713607832
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      May 1986 DH Audio ISBN 0886461561
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      Jun 1993 Blackstone Audiobooks ISBN 0786104546
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      Dec 1999 dh audio ISBN B01CPYD7JE
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      Dec 1999 Blackstone Audio, Inc. ISBN B01CPSQEG8
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      Jun 2007 Blackstone Audiobooks ISBN 0786159197
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      Jul 2007 Blackstone Audio, Inc. ISBN B000U88YOG
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      Jul 2007 Blackstone Audiobooks ISBN 0786173017
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      Jun 2012 Blackstone Audiobooks ISBN 1470820021
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      Oct 2016 Brilliance Audio ISBN 1501215507
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      Jul 2019 Audible Studios ISBN B07TK5NKZL
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      Large Print

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      Hardcover
      Oct 1984 G.K. Hall & Company ISBN 0816137579
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