Nathan Asch's writing career began with the publication of his short stories in the Paris-based transatlantic review. The oldest child of the great Yiddish writer Sholem Asch and his wife Mathilda Spira Asch, he was born in Warsaw, Poland. When Asch was ten, the family moved to Paris; three years later, after brief stays in Germany and Switzerland, they immigrated to the United States. Settling with his family in rural Staten Island, New York, Asch completed his secondary education in the New York City public schools and attended Syracuse and Columbia universities.

In the early twenties he returned to Paris. Although Asch had had two stories accepted by the Nation before he left for Paris "to write and to find himself," his career as a writer was launched with the 1924 publication of the stories he submitted to the transatlantic review : "Gertrude Donovan," "Marc Kranz," and "The Voice of...