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Four years after the Chmielnicki massacres of the seventeenth century, Jacob, a slave and cowherd in a Polish village high in the mountains, falls in love with Wanda, his master's daughter. Even after he is ransomed, he finds he can't live without her, and the two escape together to a distant Jewish community. Racked by his consciousness of sin in taking a Gentile wife and by the difficulties of concealing her identity, Jacob nonetheless stands firm as the violence of the era threatens to destroy the ill-fated couple.
Like Isaac Bashevis Singer's fiction, this poignant memoir of his childhood in the household and rabbinical court of his father is full of spirits and demons, washerwomen and rabbis, beggars and rich men. This rememberance of Singer's pious father, his rational yet adoring mother, and the never-ending parade of humanity that marched through their home is a portrait of a magnificent writer's childhood self and of the world, now gone, that formed him.
When Chelm community leader, Gronam Ox, is given a live carp in
honour of his great wisdom, he is delighted. He knows, of course,
that eating the brain of a carp increases wisdom and that the size
of the tail is indicative of the size of the brain. But when the
carp uses that very tail to slap him across the face - in what can
only have been a deliberate act - Gronam Ox is shocked. Surely no
Chelm carp would have behaved in such an appalling manner. There is
nothing else for it; the carp must be punished. While Gronam Ox
ponders the most fitting punishment, the carp is fed and looked
after in a large tub of water stationed in the town centre. It is
essential that the carp survives until the day of judgement but
Gronam Ox's deliberations are taking quite some time. The carp
grows fatter and fatter until finally, many months later, Gronam Ox
arrives at an apt sentence - one so clever that all the people of
Chelm flock to see it exacted. The carp must be drowned. Written
for children by the master storyteller, and former Nobel Laureate,
Isaac Bashevis Singer, this classic Yiddish folktale is infused
with his signature humour, warmth and wisdom. This beautifully
illustrated new publication will bring the famously foolish people
of Chelm to life for a new generation of children.
From pre-First World War Warsaw to the New York of the 1930s, Nobel
Prize-winner Isaac Bashevis Singer traces the early years of his
life in this autobiographical trilogy. In A Little Boy in Search of
God, he remembers his bookish boyhood as the son of an Orthodox
rabbi, equally absorbed in science, philosophy and cabbala. Later,
the pursuit of women came to obsess him almost as much as the
pursuit of knowledge, and in A Young Man in Search of Love he
chronicles the intricacies of his first love affairs. When he
emigrated to the United States from Poland on the eve of the Second
World War loneliness and depression overwhelmed him, and he relives
those dark years in Lost in America. From beginning to end, Love
and Exile sheds new light on Singer's own life and the fictional
lives mirrored in it.
Yasha the magician - sword swallower, fire eater, acrobat and
master of escape - is famed for his extraordinary Houdini-like
skills. Half Jewish, half Gentile, a free thinker who slips easily
between worlds, Yasha has an observant wife, a loyal assistant who
travels with him and a woman in every town. Now, though, his
exploits are catching up with him, and he is tempted to make one
final escape - from his marriage, his homeland and the last
tendrils of his father's religion. Set in Warsaw and the shtetls of
the 1870s, Isaac Bashevis Singer's second novel is a haunting
psychological portrait of a man's flight from love. Winner of the
Nobel Prize for Literature
"A piercing work of fiction with a strong claim to being Singer's
masterpiece" - Richard Bernstein, "The New York Times". 'Shadows On
The Hudson" traces the intertwined lives of a group of Jewish
refugees in New York City in the late 1940s. At its centre is Boris
Makaver, a pious, wealthy businessman whose greatest trial is his
unstable daughter, Anna. A chain of events disrupts the lives of
the close-knit community as each refugee struggles to reconcile the
horrific past with the difficult present, as Singer explores both
the nature of faith and the nature of love in the aftermath of the
Holocaust.
From the Nobel Prize-winning writer, a new collection of literary
and personal essays Old Truths and New Cliches collects nineteen
essays-most of them previously unpublished in English-by Isaac
Bashevis Singer on topics that were central to his artistic vision
throughout an astonishing and prolific literary career spanning
more than six decades. Expanding on themes reflected in his
best-known work-including the literary arts, Yiddish and Jewish
life, and mysticism and philosophy-the book illuminates in new ways
the rich intellectual, aesthetic, religious, and biographical
background of Singer's singular achievement as the first
Yiddish-language author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature. Like a modern Montaigne, Singer studied human nature
and created a body of work that contributed to a deeper
understanding of the human spirit. Much of his philosophical
thought was funneled into his stories. Yet these essays, which
Singer himself translated into English or oversaw the translation
of, present his ideas in a new way, as universal reflections on the
role of the artist in modern society. The unpublished essays
featured here include "Old Truths and New Cliches," "The Kabbalah
and Modern Times," and "A Trip to the Circus." Old Truths and New
Cliches brims with stunning archival finds that will make a
significant impact on how readers understand Singer and his work.
Singer's critical essays have long been overlooked because he has
been thought of almost exclusively as a storyteller. This book
offers an important correction to the record by further
establishing Singer as a formidable intellectual.
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The Family Moskat (Paperback)
Isaac Bashevis Singer; Translated by A.H. Gross
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R699
R587
Discovery Miles 5 870
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The vanished way of life of Eastern European Jews in the early part
of the twentieth century is the subject of this extraordinary
novel. All the strata of this complex society were populated by
powerfully individual personalities, and the whole community
pulsated with life and vitality. The affairs of the patriarchal
Meshulam Moskat and the unworldly Asa Heshel Bannet provide the
center of the book, but its real focus is the civilization that was
destroyed forever in the gas chambers of the Second World War.
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Shosha (Paperback)
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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R480
R405
Discovery Miles 4 050
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The Penitent (Paperback)
Isaac Bashevis Singer
1
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R393
R317
Discovery Miles 3 170
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From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Isaac Bashevis
Singer, The Penitent is the story of Joseph Shapiro, a
disillusioned and aimless man who discovers a purpose to his life
through the Jewish faith. Following his journey as he flees Nazi
persecution in Poland in 1939, through wealth and a failed marriage
in New York, and on to Israel, it charts his transformation from
worldly confusion to spiritual certainty in orthodox Judaism. This
powerful work is an examination of the nature of faith, the
question of identity and the notion of how to lead a good life.
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Shosha (Paperback)
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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R339
R275
Discovery Miles 2 750
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It is Warsaw in the 1930s. Aaron Greidinger is an aspiring young
writer and the son of a rabbi, who struggles to be true to his art
when he is faced with the chance of riches and a passport to
America. But as the Nazis threaten to invade Poland, Aaron
rediscovers Shosha, his childhood sweetheart - still living on
Krochmalna Street, still strangely childlike - who has been waiting
for him all these years. In the face of unimaginable horror, he
chooses to stay... One of Isaac Bashevis Singer's most personal
works, Shosha is an unforgettable novel about conflicted desires,
lost lives and the redemption of one man.
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El Seductor
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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R718
R602
Discovery Miles 6 020
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To mark the centennial of the birth of Isaac Bashevis Singer, The
Library of America presents a major celebration of Singer's
achievement, beginning with "Gimpel the Fool" and concluding with
"The Death of Methuselah."
‘[A] delightful and distinguished book [of seven tales] from middle European folklore [by the winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Literature].' 'BL. 1967 Newbery Honor Book Notable Children's Books of 1940–1970 (ALA) 1966 Fanfare Honor List (The Horn Book) "Best of the Best" Children's Books 1966–1978 (SLJ) Best Illustrated Children's Books of 1966 (NYT) Children's Books of 1966 (Library of Congress) Children's Books of the Year 1966 (CSA)
To mark the centennial of the birth of Isaac Bashevis Singer, The
Library of America presents Collected Stories, a major celebration
of Singer's achievement. Beginning with Gimpel the Fool, whose
title story brought Singer to sudden prominence in America when
translated by Saul Bellow in 1953, and concluding with The Death of
Methuselah, the collection published three years before his death
in 1991, this three-volume edition brings together for the first
time all the story collections Singer published in English in the
versions he called his "second originals"--translations he
supervised and collaborated on, revising as he worked. In addition,
Collected Stories includes previously uncollected or unpublished
stories from his manuscripts in the Ransom Center collections,
providing a rare glimpse into the workshop of a literary genius.
Here are nearly 200 stories--the full range of Singer's
vision--encompassing Old World shtetl and New World exile. Born in
Poland in 1904 into a family of rabbis, Singer was raised in a
traditional culture that perished at the hands of the Nazis during
the Second World War, and his haunting stories testify to the
richness of that vanished world. Singer's Old World tales reveal a
wild, mischievous, often disturbing supernaturalism evocative of
local storytelling traditions. After his immigration to America,
Singer's stories increasingly explore the daily lived reality and
imaginative boundaries of Jewish culture as it was transplanted to
the United States, revealing him to be the emblematic immigrant
American writer, a writer whose vision and insights enlarged our
idea of what it is to be an American.
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The Slave (Paperback)
Isaac Bashevis Singer
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R337
R273
Discovery Miles 2 730
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Jacob, a Jewish slave held in a mountain village after escaping a
massacre by Cossacks, will be killed if he tries to escape. The one
saving grace is his love for his master's daughter, Wanda. They
begin a secret affair, trying to avoid the cruelty of the other
villagers, until one day Jacob's fortunes unexpectedly change. Now
he must choose between his need to be with his people and his love
for Wanda, who in turn will also discover the meaning of brutality.
In The Slave, published in 1962, Isaac Bashevis Singer creates a
dreamlike portrayal of isolation, rejection, love and the meaning
of sacrifice.
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The Slave (Paperback)
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Cecil Hemley; Isaac Bashevis Singer
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R475
R399
Discovery Miles 3 990
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