# The Tenants

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/bernard-malamud/the-tenants/9780099289876

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![The Tenants](https://quivercdn.com/covers/vintage-classics/bernard-malamud/the-tenants_978-00-9928-987-6.jpg?v=2026-04-22%2005%3A36%3A04)

- Book: [The Tenants](https://www.bookquiver.com/bernard-malamud/the-tenants) ([The Tenants.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/bernard-malamud/the-tenants.md))
- Authors: [Bernard Malamud](https://www.bookquiver.com/bernard-malamud)
- Publisher: Vintage Classics
- ISBN: 978-00-9928-987-6
- Pages: 160
- Published: 2014-04-03
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

The last remaining tenant in a condemned New York tenement, Harry Lesser struggles against rising panic and escalating odds to complete the novel he started ten years earlier. Then he stumbles on a black man, sitting typing in one of the deserted flats: Willie Spearmint, soul writer. Touchy, hostile and anti-semitic, demanding then denouncing Lesser's critical help with his floridly violent tales of oppression, Spearmint is exactly what Lesser doesn't need - or does he?