Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis-Singer was a Jewish American writer who lived and worked in New York City. Winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in 1904 in a small village of Leoncin near Warsaw. His date of birth is not precisely known. The boy's father was a Hasidic rabbi. The boy was educated in the traditional heider; he was very fond of reading. In 1920 Singer entered a yeshiva, but dropped out after a few months. In 1923 Singer came to Warsaw, where he stayed for a long time. Singer first began working as a proofreader for a Jewish literary magazine. At this time, the young man discovered an interest in philosophy, physiology, psychology, and the natural and occult sciences. It was during this period that Singer tries to write prose. In 1927, in the magazine where Singer works ("Literary Sheets"), his first story appears - "In Old Age". The work was printed under the pseudonym of Tee. After that Singer began to write short stories quite regularly. At the same time, he translated into Yiddish various works by such writers as Knut Hamsun, Thomas Mann and Erich Maria Remarque. In 1933 Singer became deputy editor of the literary magazine Globe. The same magazine gradually published his novel Satan in Goray in 1934. The novel was published in full in 1943. In the 1930s the writer had to endure many blows of fate. The Nazis were in power in Germany. Singer left Warsaw and went to the USA. It was not easy for him there, he had a creative crisis. In 1937 his novel The Messianic Sinner was published. In 1940 he married Alma Wasserman, who, like him, was an immigrant. Three years later he was granted American citizenship. In 1944 the writer had another creative crisis connected to the death of his older brother. In 1945 Singer began work on The Moscat Family. In 1964 the writer became the first honorary member of the National Institute of Arts and Culture. And in 1969 he was awarded the National Book Award for Children's Literature. In 1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer received the Nobel Prize for Literature, the highest award of literature, "for the emotional art of storytelling, which, with its roots in Polish-Jewish cultural traditions, raises at the same time eternal questions. The writer died July 24, 1991.