Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer was a Polish-born Jewish-American writer who wrote novels, short stories, and essays in Yiddish. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978 for his "impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life". He was also known for his rich blending of irony, wit, and wisdom, as well as his use of the occult and the grotesque in his fiction. He wrote and published first in Yiddish and later translated his own works into English with the help of editors and collaborators. He was a leading figure in the Yiddish literary movement and influenced many other writers, such as Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, and Saul Bellow. Some of his works were adapted for the theater, film, and television. His most famous works include The Magician of Lublin, The Family Moskat, The Manor, The Estate, Enemies, A Love Story, A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories, and Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories. He also wrote memoirs, such as In My Father's Court and A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw, and essays on various topics, such as vegetarianism, literature, and Judaism. He died of a stroke in 1991 at the age of 87.