Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories: One Night in Brazil to The Death of Methuselah (Library of America, 151)

In the wake of his receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978, Isaac Bashevis Singer published several volumes of short stories in collections that mingled recent work with previously untranslated stories written in Yiddish decades earlier. Stretching back to “The Jew from Babylon,” a story first published in 1932, and gathering tales such as “Brother Beetle” and “There are No Coincidences” from the 1960s, the works collected in this Library of America volume, the third of three, serve as a retrospective view of Singer’s achievement as a storyteller.

Collected Stories: One Night in Brazil to The Death of Methuselah also contains ten stories published in English translation for the first time, selected from the extensive collection of Singer’s papers at the University of Texas. Ranging from “Between Shadows,” an evocative, naturalistic sketch set in Warsaw, to the bittersweet melodrama “Morris and Timma,” to the beguiling fable “Hershele and Hanele, or The Power of a Dream.” These stories enrich our understanding of Singer as a writer. The volume also includes “The Bird,” “My Adventures as an Idealist,” "and “Exes,” stories published in magazines that were not included in any of Singer’s collections. Complementing the seventy-eight stories gathered here is the introduction to Gifts (1985), a version of a lecture Singer had delivered since the early 1960s—sometimes called “Why I Write as I Do”—which illuminates his biography, philosophical outlook, and literary aims.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Isaac Bashevis Singer emigrated to New York from Poland in 1935 and found work with the Jewish Daily Forward. Author of many novels, collections of short stories, and books for children, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978.
Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College and the author or editor of numerous books.