1982, the same year that Bernard InMalamud published his exuberant fantasy, another book stirred the public consciousness. Although outwardly it did not much resemble God's Grace, on a deeper level both could have been written by the same person. In the nonfictional The Fate of the Earth, Jonathan Schell (also a Jewish writer) inventories the genocidal aftereffects of a total nuclear exchange. "It may be one of the most important works of recent years," Walter Cronkite praised it, adding: "there still may be hope to save our civilization." With austere and unflinching detail Schell confronts the wintry devastation of a global doomsday. So does Malamud in the last novel published in his lifetime—the dark, experimental, and allegorical God's Grace.

There is no mistaking the urgency of Malamud's concern for the fate of the Earth. God's Grace, quirky and mythical where The Fate of the Earth...