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.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Review:
I am not Jewish, nor do I consider the author a "Jewish" writer. He is an author of stories that illustrate the great mysteries of life using Jewish characters. Of course he writes of a world, especially the Eastern European one, as a Jew saw it. Rather it is my hope that a reader of this review is not turned away by any labels. Instead, I would rather they know that between these pages is a man who writes stories about being human, about love, about death. Especially about death and the passing of... more info
Jews in New York.:
Isaac Bashevis Singer once said that he preferred writing stories to novels because the short-story form brought perfection within reach. The more than 60 stories gathered here show Singer striving for and often achieving such perfection, crafting tales that fuse crystalline storytelling with an unnerving exploration of irrational desire, family life and religious piety, and fundamental emotions such as shame, lust, anger, pride, and tenderness.
Here is the table of contents:
This book is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The publisher's website states that this book is a SELECTION, not a complete collection: "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... more info
The Vibrancy of a Life Lost in Time:
Singer brings back the humor and tragedy of Jewish lives from another time and place -- the shtetls and cities of Eastern Europe in the 1910s and 20s. We laugh and cry with the poignant predicaments of the characters and how they rejoice and make their peace with G-d and themselves. There is much we can learn from their lives, and Singer tells the stories like no one else can.
