About this item
From the Nobel Prize-winning writer, a new collection of literary and personal essaysOld Truths and New Clichés collects nineteen essays -- most of them previously unpublished in English -- by Isaac Bashevis Singer on topics that were central to his artistic vision throughout an astonishing and prolific literary career spanning more than six decades. Expanding on themes reflected in his best-known work -- including the literary arts, Yiddish and Jewish life, and mysticism and philosophy -- the book illuminates in new ways the rich intellectual, aesthetic, religious, and biographical background of Singer's singular achievement as the first Yiddish-language author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.Like a modern Montaigne, Singer studied human nature and created a body of work that contributed to a deeper understanding of the human spirit.
About the Author
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1991) was a Polish-born Jewish-American author of short stories, novels, essays, cultural criticism, memoirs, and stories for children. His career spanned nearly seven decades of literary production, at the center of which was the translation of his work from Yiddish into English, which he undertook with various collaborators and editors. Singer published widely during his lifetime, with nearly sixty stories appearing in The New Yorker, and received numerous awards and prizes, including two Newberry Honor Book Awards (1968 & 1969) , two National Book Awards (1970 & 1974) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1978) . Known for fiction that portrayed 19th-century Polish Jewry as well as supernatural tales that combined Jewish mysticism with demonology, Singer was a master storyteller whose sights were set squarely on the tension between human nature and the human spirit.