Product Description

The forty-seven stories in this collection, selected by Singer himself out of nearly one hundred and fifty, range from the publication of his now-classic first collection, Gimpel the Fool, in 1957, until 1981. They include supernatural tales, slices of life from Warsaw and the shtetls of Eastern Europe, and stories of the Jews displaced from that world to the New World, from the East Side of New York to California and Miami.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51543 in Books
• Published on: 1983-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 614 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780374517885
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"Sparkling and triumphant, Isaac Bashevis Singer's stories are filled with wonder, gratitude, humor, irony and a wry eroticism that manages to exalt the pleasures of the flesh and the soul at the same time."—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

"There are whole fistfuls of masterpieces in this one volume: a cornucopia of invention . . . When all is said and done, [it] is an American master's 'Book of Creation.'"—Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times Book Review
-- Review

Review

Language Notes
Text: English, Yiddish (translation)

Customer Reviews

The Greatest Short Story Writer of the Century?
I hesitate to even comment on this book for fear of not doing it justice. It's a collection of the best short stories of the Nobel Prize-winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. He definitely is *not* a minimalist in today's fashionable style. You will find fabulous riches here: satire, history, horror, fantasy, faith, despair, wonders. It starts with "Gimpel the Fool" of course; it's all of Singer in a nutshell. Is this poor wanderer of eastern Europe mad, or does he really see the world beyond this one? His kindness and faith mark him as an eternal victim--by this world's standards he is an idiot and easy mark But is he the real human being and his tormentors really just animals? And what sort of God would let it come to that? I love this book with all my heart and fervently advise you to get ahold of it. It might change your life.

Entertaining look into the Yiddish experience.
This book satisfied my craving to learn the type of world mygrandparents came from, their language and attitutes. I laughed sohard from Singers descriptions of his characters that I thought I would bust. This is a book for all to learn to appreciate a rich culture that existed in Eastern Europe and was transported to America with those remaining lost in the Holocaust. Singer has some imagination and the talent to relay his thoughts clearly that you feel that you are among the characters. The translation from Yiddish to English was well done and conveyed the message completely. A must for those who want to expand their knowledge of the roots of the Jewish people and their lives and experiences in a world lost.

Stunning, profoundly human stories
For anyone not familiar with Singer's work, this provides something of an intense, but deeply engaging, introduction. Although the setting is often the closed world of Poland's rural Jewish communities before the Nazi invasion, these stories are replete with the most profound insights about human nature that are universally applicable. Told with dazzling skill, and using a wonderful sense of realistic detail (including beautiful descriptions of the natural world), these stories are rich, full and deeply moving. Within the small communities Singer uses as his settings, he explores faith, despair, love, longing, and above all else, loneliness, in ways that are as moving as they are brilliant. Like Tolstoy, Singer is able to explore these profound themes without the slightest pretension and without writing "philosophical" prose. Indeed, reading them is like listening to a brilliant oral story teller who effortlessly draws you into his tale--but then you realize you are, in fact, reading an extraordinarily sophisticated text. This is some of the finest writing I've read in many years and is one of those books I would take with me to that desert island everyone talks about.