2020-11-21 Sat

Isaac Bashevis Singer was Polish-born American writer of novels, short stories, and essays in Yiddish, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. His fiction, depicting Jewish life in Poland and the United States, is remarkable for its rich blending of irony, wit, and wisdom, flavoured distinctively with the occult and the grotesque.

The Polish form of his birth name was Icek Hersz Zynger. He used his mother's first name in an initial literary pseudonym, Izaak Baszewis, which he later expanded. Singer's first published story won the literary competition of the literarishe bletter and garnered him a reputation as a promising talent.

He was also awarded two U.S. National Book Awards, one in Children's Literature for his memoir A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing up in Warsaw (1970) and one in Fiction for his collection A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories (1974).

To honour him Zambia Postal Department has issued a stamp of value 2000 Zambian Kwacha. It depicts his portrait in the foreground.

Image Source: Colnect.com