The Natural. by Malamud, Bernard - 1952

New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1952. First edition of the author's first book, and one of the greatest baseball novels of all time. Octavo, original cloth. Signed by Bernard Malamud and Robert Redford on the half-title page. Redford played the character of Roy Hobbs in the 1984 film adaptation. Variety called the film "impeccably made ... fable about success and failure in America." James Berardinelli praised The Natural as "[a]rguably the best baseball movie ever made". Sports writer Bill Simmons has argued, "Any 'Best Sports Movies' list that doesn't feature either Hoosiers or The Natural as the No. 1 pick shouldn't even count." Near fine in a near fine dust jacket with a touch of shelfwear. Cover art by Simon Goltche. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Rare and desirable signed by both Malamud and Redford. "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" (Alfred Kazin). It was the basis for the 1984 film bearing the same name directed by Barry Levinson and starring Robert Redford, Glenn Close, and Robert Duvall.