Isaac Bashevis Singer, the only Yiddish writer ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, was among the most popular and widely read authors of the twentieth century. By the time of his death at the age of eighty-seven, Singer had received a lion's share of the world's foremost literary prizes, including the Louis Lamed Prize (1950, 1956), the American Academy Grant (1959), the Epstein Fiction Award (1963), the Daroff Memorial Award (1963), the Foreign Book Prize (France, 1965), two National Endowment for the Arts grants (1966), the Bancarella Prize (Italy, 1967), two Newbery Honor Book Awards (1968, 1969), two National Book Awards (1970, 1974), the S. Y. Agnon Gold Medal (Israel, 1975), and the Nobel Prize in 1978. In addition, he had been awarded eighteen honorary doctorates and had been elected to both the American Academy and the American Institute of Arts and Letters, from which he had received the high honor of the Gold Medal.

Singer's extensive body of...