Collected Stories, Volume 2: Gimpel the Fool to The Letter Writer »

The great voice of the Yiddish-language tradition in modern Jewish literature, Isaac Bashevis Singer is best known for short stories (think "Yentl") with deeply Jewish roots yet universal appeal.

To mark the centenary of the birth of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the sole Yiddish writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize and one of the most influential and beloved Jewish-American authors, The Library of America presents Collected Stories: Gimpel the Fool to The Letter Writer, one of three volumes celebrating Singer's achievement as a master storyteller. Among the 54 works gathered in this collection, which brings together the first four English-language volumes of Singer's stories, is his enduring parable of probity and goodness, "Gimpel the Fool," as well as the disturbing supernatural tales that explore irrational undercurrents of human personality and collective life. Also included are several stories later adapted for the stage and screen, such as "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy," "Taibele and Her Demon," and "The Mirror." "Singer casts a spell," writes Joyce Carol Oates. "Open one of his books anywhere, the words leap out with a power that would seem to us demonic if it were not, at the very same time, so utterly plausible."

The New York Times - William Deresiewicz

The sheer abundance of [Singer's] production, along with that famous interest in sex, suggests a Jewish Boccaccio, and Singer is indeed Boccaccian in his exuberance, facility and invention. Rejecting modernism with its deliberate difficulties and programmatic experimentation, he remained faithful to the older pleasures of character and plot. Singer can get a story going in no time flat, conjure characters so vivid you feel as if they're sitting next to you, pour forth an endless supply of situations and surprises. Some of his stories are mere trifles (the third volume in particular contains a fair number of throwaways), but many more are enigmatic or mordant or sly, hauntingly strange or piercingly sad.