The Magic Barrel is a collection of thirteen short stories

Short Stories

Short Stories may refer to:*A plural for Short story*Short Stories , an American pulp magazine published from 1890-1959*Short Stories, a 1954 collection by O. E...

 written by Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud was an author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford...

 and published in 1958. It won the 1959 National Book Award

National Book Award

The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...

 for fiction.

The stories included are :

• "The First Seven Years"
• "The Mourners
  The Mourners
  Bernard Malamud’s short story "The Mourners” first appeared in Discovery in January, 1955. The story was later included in The Magic Barrel, the first collection of short stories written by Bernard Malamud published in 1958.-Plot summary:...
  
  "
• "The Girl of My Dreams"
• "Angel Levine"
• "Behold the Key"
• "Take Pity"
• "The Prison"
• "The Lady of the Lake"
• "A Summer's Reading"
• "The Bill"
• "The Last Mohican"
• "The Loan"
• "The Magic Barrel"

"The Magic Barrel" starts as the about-to-be rabbi Leo Finkle has been urged by his teachers to find a wife before he actually becomes a rabbi; he gets a bigger congregation that way, they say. Because he is quite incapable (he recognizes this later on in the story and presumes his study stole his social life) and has almost finished his study (and thus has to hurry), he answers an ad of a marriage counselor. Unhappy and terribly sorry about a meeting with one of the proposed women, he retreats back again to his study. The marriage counselor suddenly turns up delivering him photographs of women, which he initially ignores. However, something draws him to them and after viewing several of them he discovers another one in the envelope. He instantly falls in love with that picture and yearns to meet her. After he's found the marriage counselor (who left him immediately after delivering the photographs) the girl turns out to be the counselor's daughter (though at first the counselor states it's one of the photographs that should have been in the barrel; hence Finkle thinks of the barrel as magic). He gets to meet her anyway; the marriage counselor (her father) hiding around the corner, "chanting prayers for the dead."

The short story Angel Levine

The Angel Levine

The Angel Levine is a 1970 U.S. film directed by Jan Kadar and based on a short story by Bernard Malamud. The film is about an impoverished New York City tailor who is unable to work due to health problems, which creates a financial strain since his wife is seriously ill...

was made into a 1970 film starring Harry Belafonte

Harry Belafonte

Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...

 and Zero Mostel

Zero Mostel

Samuel Joel “Zero” Mostel was an American actor of stage and screen, best known for his portrayal of comic characters such as Tevye on stage in Fiddler on the Roof, Pseudolus on stage and on screen in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Max Bialystock in the original film version...

 and directed by Ján Kadár

Ján Kadár

Ján Kadár was a Slovak film writer and director. As a filmmaker, he worked in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the United States, and Canada. Most of his films were directed in tandem with Elmar Klos. The two became best known for their Oscar-winning The Shop on Main Street...

.