Isaac Bashevis Singer, In the World of Chaos

A complete picture of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s literary heritage.

This volume brings together a rich collection of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s early work, including 27 short stories, 7 sketches of early fiction, as well as critical essays, childhood memoirs, and interviews.

Singer’s early literary career in Warsaw (1925–1935) was crucial in laying the foundations for his later achievements in Jewish and world literature as a storyteller of Polish Jewry. During this period, he worked as a journalist, writer, and translator in the leading Yiddish cultural center of Eastern Europe. However, much of this work has remained unavailable in English translation.

This volume makes a significant portion of Singer’s early fiction and non-fiction accessible in English for the first time, opening it up to scholars, students, and general readers alike.

A leading figure in the Yiddish literary movement, Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1991), was a Polish-born Jewish-American dramatist, novelist, playwright, satirist, and translator. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. 

Jan Schwarz is Associate Professor and Senior lecturer of Yiddish at Lund University in Sweden.