Isaac Bashevis Singer brought the vibrant milieu of pre-Holocaust Polish Jewry to the English-speaking world through his subtle psychological insight, deep sympathy for the eccentricities of Jewish folk custom, and unerring feel for the heroism of everyday life. His novels, includingThe Family MoskatandEnemies: A Love Story, and his short stories, such as Yentl and Gimpel the Fool, prove him a consummate storyteller and probably the greatest Yiddish writer of the twentieth century.
Isaac Bashevis Singer brought the vibrant milieu of pre-Holocaust Polish Jewry to the English-speaking world through his subtle psychological insight, deep sympathy for the eccentricities of Jewish folk custom, and unerring feel for the heroism of everyday life. His novels, includingThe Family MoskatandEnemies: A Love Story, and his short stories, such as "Yentl" and "Gimpel the Fool," prove him a consummate storyteller and probably the greatest Yiddish writer of the twentieth century.
The iridescent charm of Isaac Bashevis Singer is such as to give the slip to the very letters of the alphabet, but Janet Hadda has out-tricked the Yiddish trickster in this brief but wonderfully alive-and-kicking biography. The story she tells will entertain, appall, and fascinate both those who have yet to discover Singer and those who think they know him. —Jack Miles, MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize–winning author ofGod: A Biography