Isaac Bashevis Singer
de Ilan Stavans
"The seventh American and sole Yiddish writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in Poland and immigrated to the United States in 1935 at age 30. Although he lived in Manhattan for more than 50 years and set many of his stories there, he wrote virtually all his work in Yiddish, participated fully in translating - and often simultaneously revising - the tales and novels that were to make him famous among American readers. Drawing on East European Jewish folk memory and mystical tradition, his writing merged Old World demons and modern apartments, the faith of the European shtetl and the worldliness of postwar America." "Singer first captured the attention of mainstream American critics and readers when Saul Bellow translated "Gimpel the Fool" in 1953, and in the following years his fiction would appear in such popular magazines as Harper's, The New Yorker, and Playboy, and in a series of novels and remarkable story collections. As Singer became a well-known public figure - the living embodiment, for many American readers, of a vanished culture - his work was adapted for the screen: the story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" as a feature film starring Barbra Streisand and the novel Enemies, A Love Story as a film by Paul Mazursky. In his later years he also turned to children's books, such as the Newberry Award-winning Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories, illustrated by Maurice Sendak." "With more than 60 black-and-white and 20 full-color illustrations, Singer: An Album is a reliable guide to the complex, multifaced life and successful career of one of America's greatest storytellers. James Gibbons' commentary relates what is known about Singer's life and helps the reader put Singer's stories in an accurate and carefully documented context. Both new and longtime fans of Singer will find that the information about his years in Warsaw and Bilgoray and his adventure on the beaches of Coney Island and the streets of Manhattan deepens the experience of reading his fiction."--BOOK JACKET.
