Singer, Isaac Bashevis
Singer, Isaac Bashevis (1904–91),writer of Yiddish stories, novels, memoirs, and children's books. Most of his work has been translated into English, with his own careful direction and participation, and much of it reflects motifs of Jewish folklore. Singer was born in Poland but emigrated to the United States before World War II. His fiction is populated with demons, dybbuks, imps, witches, ghosts, angels, magicians, and other traditional figures (including the Golem) summoned in part from the mystical vision of his father, a Hassidic rabbi, but drawn with the sharp‐edged realism that characterized his mother. Fuelled by his parents' active storytelling and his own experience of shtetl culture, Singer believed that all good literature has roots in ethnic lore. Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (1966), The Fearsome Inn (1967), and When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw and Other Stories (1968) won critical acclaim as Newbery...
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