Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991), Polish-American author, was admired for his re-creation of the forgotten world of provincial 19th-century Poland and his depiction of a timeless Jewish ghetto existence.

Isaac Bashevis Singer was born on July 14, 1904, in Radzymin, Poland. In his family's rabbinic tradition, he was groomed for Hasidism, attending a Warsaw seminary. However, he decided on a writing career. After completing his seminary studies, he worked as a journalist for the Yiddish press in various parts of Poland. Emigrating to the United States in 1935, Singer became a reporter for the Daily Forward in New York City, America's largest Yiddish newspaper. Although he personally adapted to his new habitat, his early literary efforts display nostalgia for the "old country"; the subjects seem part of a distant past remembered from vivid tales of Polish storytellers.

Singer's first novel, The Family Moskat (1950), was likened by critics to the narratives of Ivan...