Isaac Bashevis Singer

Karsh, Yousuf, 1908-2002 · 1979

He had just returned from Sweden, where he had received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He spoke of this event with a wonder hitherto reserved for miraculous happenings in his books. Ensconced in his library, Talmudic tracts piled helter-skelter amid first editions, Singer recounted events of his youth in Poland and marveled at his personal miracle: that the Nobel Prize should have been awarded to an author writing in Yiddish, primarily about a small segment of a vanished way of life, who had somehow touched the sensibilities of the world (Karsh, 1996).