MALAMUD, Bernard. A New Life.

New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961.

8vo.; in aquamarine cloth with color titles on spine; no dust-jacket. Spine faded; first 30 pp. of contents severely damaged on upper-left margin, but still legible.

First edition, first printing, inscribed by Malamud on free front endpapers: “For Ida and Gino / With love / Bernie”. Ida was Malamud’s mother, and Gino his stepfather.

Malamud’s third novel is the semi-autobiographical campus story of Sy Levin, who takes up a new job at Cascadia College. Jonathan Lethem, in his introduction to the FSG Classics re-edition of the novel, calls it “an overlooked masterpiece. It may still be undervalued as Malamud's funniest and most embracing novel.”