Every time a book by Bernard Malamud (1914-1986) is published in Greek, Mr. Gray celebrates the occasion. An unlikely American Jew, he was overshadowed by his elder Isaac Basevis Singer (1902–1991), his contemporary Saul Bellow (1915–2005), as well as his younger Roth (1933–2018), though he was initially influenced by him.

But Malamud deserves attention as a novelist and as a writer of short stories. Perhaps it is in the stories that his skill is manifested, with these suspiciously, deceptively soft tones and underground electric currents.

Mr. Gray holds in his hands the freshly typed “Helper” from Kastaniotis’ publications in the inspired translation by Katerina Skina: post-war Brooklyn, Jewish communities, people largely oppressed, but not without dreams. An Italian-American Jewish grocer’s assistant who has fallen in love with his boss’s daughter, who probably doesn’t like Jews (and “puts his hand” on the cash register from time to time), tries, like his boss, to escape from a life in which they both feel embarrassed. Each person believes, feels that he deserves something more. But why does he often not know how to get to him?

Everyone feels they deserve something more. But why does he often not know how to get to him?

Mr. Gray recalls Malamud’s artful tale of a pensioner longing for a girl who lives in his apartment building. He slips a note under her door in which, like an old-fashioned gentleman, he expresses his feelings for her. This is a silent invitation that will be laughed at.

Simple, banal story, huh? And yet Malamud gives her an air of openness: you don’t feel sorry for his hero for a moment, you’re a little ashamed of him, but you sympathize with him. As with a girl: youth and beauty make her play, laugh, despise.

“There is a sad story,” says Mr. Gray, “of Malamud’s last meeting with Roth shortly before the death of the former. Malamud reads to Roth an excerpt from the manuscript of a book that will never be finished. He is already sick and the result is rather bad. Roth can hardly hide his displeasure. In a pause, he awkwardly asks, “Then? What will happen next?” And Malamud, face down, closes the file, saying, looking into space: “It does not matter what happens next.” “This incident is described by Roth’s wife, Claire Bloom, Malamud’s daughter in her father’s wonderful monograph and by Roth himself in Mustard conversations.” When it comes to writing, I’m not good at it, he says. Roth doesn’t convince me, Mr. Gray says. “He was just really tough. And Bernard Malamud deserves new readers. The man is old, not the writer.”