It was the autumn of 1926 when Israel Joshua Singer, at the invitation of the editor of the New York Yiddish daily Forverts, traveled to the Soviet Union for a reportage that would take him several months. “These images and impressions are written in a moment, as is always the case with travelers,” he would comment on his work, which nevertheless constitutes an exceptional, and in many ways unique, testimony.I.J. Singer, who had already observed the Soviet country in depth at the h...

In the Polish city of Lodz, the twin brothers Ashkenazi grow up with contrasting characters. Max, depicted as sickly and cunning, is driven by ambition and greed to be more successful than his brother, whereas Yakub, robust and a dolt in school, is drawn to easy living and decadence. Historically and geographically expansive, the novel begins after the Napoleonic Wars and ends after World War I, more than a century later, the rise and fall of Lodz and its Jewish inhabitants emerging as the...

As one of the most well-known Yiddish writers of the twentieth century, Israel Joshua Singer produced an impressive opus - presented in three volumes in Collected Works - in which he tackles religious, social, and political challenges facing the Jewish people. Unabashedly critical, he does not offer substitutes for what he views as failed ideologies, instead seeing the writer's role in the honest expression of and engagement with this inescapable predicament.In this volume, Singer'...

While Willy has neither the multi-generational sweep nor the moral gravitas of I. J. Singer’s family sagas, its themes are nonetheless timeless, its struggles archetypal. A father and son quarrel, and, in the process, a richly compact narrative emerges. Their respective stories define what is lost and what is gained in immigrant passage to the new world. The eponymous hero, Volf Rubin—Willy (Vili) Robin in America—is the rare agon who shares center stage with his antagonist, that is, his m...

In the Polish city of Lodz, the Brothers Ashkenazi grew up very differently in talent and in temperament. Max, the firstborn, is fiercely intelligent and conniving, determined to succeed financially by any means necessary. Slower-witted Jacob is strong, handsome, and charming but without great purpose in life. While Max is driven by ambition and greed to be more successful than his brother, Jacob is drawn to easy living and decadence. As waves of industrialism and capitalism flood the city...

A New York Times Notable Book • Winner of the National Jewish Book Award • Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award • A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist“A gripping detective story, a stirring epic, a tale of ghosts and dark marvels, a thrilling display of scholarship, a meditation on the unfathomable mystery of good and evil, a testimony to the enduring power of the ancient archetypes that haunt one Jewish family and the greater human family, The Lost is as complex and...

The great novel of 1920s Berlin life, in a new translation by Michael Hofmann, translator of Alone in BerlinFranz Biberkopf is back on the streets of Berlin. Determined to go straight after a stint in prison, he finds himself thwarted by an unpredictable external agency that looks an awful lot like fate. Cheated, humiliated, thrown from a moving car; embroiled in an underworld of pimps, thugs, drunks and prostitutes, Franz picks himself up over and over ag...

'Exquisitely written... haunting... Few books, I think, capture so well the sense of a life broken for ever by trauma and guilt' Sunday Times'An unsparing, honest and insightful memoir, that shows how private failure becomes national disaster' Hilary MantelTwenty years after the end of the war, Horst Krüger attempted to make sense of his childhood. He had grown up in a quiet Berlin suburb. Here, people lived ordinary lives, believe...

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING EMILE HIRSCHA classic memoir that is both an inspiring true love story and a historical espionage thriller, Bau: Artist at War comes at a critical moment when the last survivors of the German concentration camps are dying and the Holocaust is slipping from memory. Includes a foreword by Clila Bau-Cohen and Hadasa Bau and an introduction by Sean McNamara, director of the major motion picture of the same name.

The Israeli master’s exceptional final novelSHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2017Shmuel – a young, idealistic student – has abandoned his studies in Jerusalem, taking a live-in job as a companion to a cantankerous old man. But Shmuel quickly becomes obsessed with the taciturn Atalia, a woman of enchanting beauty, who also lives in the house.As the household’s tangled, tragic past becomes apparent, so too does story...

Sanna and her ravishing friend Gerti would rather speak of love than politics, but in 1930s Frankfurt, politics cannot be escaped--even in the lady's bathroom. Crossing town one evening to meet up with Gerti's Jewish lover, a blockade cuts off the girls' path--it is the Fürher in a motorcade procession, and the crowd goes mad striving to catch a glimpse of Hitler's raised "empty hand." Then the parade is over, and in the long hours after midnight Sanna and Gerti will face betrayal, death, ...

This wonderful translation of Dream Story will allow a fresh generation of readers to enjoy this beautiful, heartless and baffling novella. Dream Story tells how through a simple sexual admission a husband and wife ware driven apart into rival worlds of erotic revenge.