Publication Order of The Manor Books
| The Manor | 1967 |
| The Estate | 1969 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Satan in Goray | 1935 |
| The Family Moskat | 1950 |
| The Magician of Lublin | 1960 |
| The Slave | 1962 |
| Enemies, a Love Story | 1972 |
| Shosha | 1978 |
| Reaches of Heaven: A Story of the Baal Shem Tov | 1980 |
| The Penitent | 1983 |
| The King of the Fields | 1988 |
| Scum | 1991 |
| The Certificate | 1992 |
| Meshugah | 1994 |
| Shadows on the Hudson | 1998 |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
| Yentl the Yeshiva Boy | 1983 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories | 1957 |
| The Spinoza of Market Street | 1961 |
| Short Friday and Other Stories | 1963 |
| The Séance and Other Stories | 1968 |
| A Friend of Kafka and Other Stories | 1970 |
| A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories | 1973 |
| Passions and Other Stories | 1975 |
| Old Love | 1979 |
| The Collected Stories | 1982 |
| The Image and Other Stories | 1985 |
| The Death of Methuselah and Other Stories | 1988 |
| A Letter to Mama and Other Uncollected Stories | 2024 |
Publication Order of Children’s Books
| Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories | 1966 |
| Mazel and Shlimazel | 1967 |
| The Fearsome Inn | 1967 |
| When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw and Other Stories | 1968 |
| A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw | 1969 |
| Elijah the Slave | 1970 |
| Joseph and Koza | 1970 |
| Alone in the Wild Forest | 1971 |
| The Topsy-Turvy Emperor of China | 1971 |
| The Wicked City | 1972 |
| The Fools of Chelm and Their History | 1973 |
| Why Noah Chose the Dove | 1974 |
| A Tale of Three Wishes | 1975 |
| Naftali the Storyteller and His Horse, Sus | 1976 |
| The Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah | 1980 |
| The Golem | 1982 |
| Stories for Children | 1984 |
| The Parakeet Named Dreidel | 2015 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| In My Father’s Court | 1966 |
| The Hasidim | 1973 |
| A Little Boy in Search of God | 1976 |
| A Young Man in Search of Love | 1978 |
| Lost in America | 1981 |
| Love and Exile | 1984 |
| More Stories from My Father’s Court | 2000 |
| Old Truths and New Clichés | 2022 |
| Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt: The War Years, 1939-1945 | 2023 |
About Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1991) was a Polish-born Jewish American writer who wrote in Yiddish and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. He is best known for short stories such as “Gimpel the Fool” and for novels including “The Family Moskat”, “The Magician of Lublin” and “Enemies, a Love Story”.
Singer was born in Leoncin, a village near Warsaw, the son of a Hasidic rabbi, and grew up on Krochmalna Street in the Yiddish-speaking Jewish quarter of Warsaw. His older brother Israel Joshua Singer and his sister Esther Kreitman also became novelists. In 1923 his brother found him work as a proofreader at the magazine Literarishe Bleter. His first novel, “Satan in Goray”, about a messianic cult in a Polish village after the massacres of 1648, was serialised in 1933 and printed as a book in 1935.
In 1935 Singer emigrated to the United States and settled in New York, where he wrote for the Yiddish newspaper The Jewish Daily Forward. He married Alma Wassermann in 1940 and became a US citizen in 1943. His novels were serialised in Yiddish newspapers before he prepared English versions with translators. “The Family Moskat” (1950) was his first book to appear in English, and Saul Bellow’s translation of “Gimpel the Fool”, printed in Partisan Review in 1953, gave its name to his first English story collection in 1957.
“The Manor” (1967) and “The Estate” (1969), first serialised as a single work between 1953 and 1955, follow Polish Jews in the late nineteenth century. “The Slave” (1962) is a love story set in the aftermath of 1648. “Shosha” (1978) is set in Warsaw in the 1930s, and its narrator, Aaron Greidinger, returns in “Meshugah” (1994). Singer also wrote for children: “Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories” (1966), illustrated by Maurice Sendak, was a Newbery Honor Book.
He won two US National Book Awards, for the childhood memoir “A Day of Pleasure” (children’s literature, 1970) and for “A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories” (fiction, 1974). Films of his work include “The Magician of Lublin” (1979), “Yentl” (1983), directed by and starring Barbra Streisand, and “Enemies, A Love Story” (1989).
Singer died in Surfside, Florida, on 24 July 1991. Several novels have appeared in English since then, among them “The Certificate” (1992) and “Shadows on the Hudson” (1998). The most recent volumes are the essay collection “Old Truths and New Clichés” (2022) and “A Letter to Mama and Other Uncollected Stories” (2024).
Photo: Bernard Gotfryd / Library of Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).