About a World That No Longer Exists

In his youth, Israel Joshua Singer (1893-1943), the son and grandson of rabbis, broke away, like many in his generation, from the traditional world and after many years of wandering and hard work achieved literary calling, becoming one of the most popular prose writers of the 1920s-1930s in Yiddish literature. During World War II, I.J. Singer began to seek ways to reconcile with his own past. The more ominous rumors about the fate of Polish Jews reached the United States, the stronger he felt the longing for the lost world of his childhood. In 1943, Singer began writing his memoirs "About a World That No Longer Exists." But the barely started work was interrupted by the untimely death of the writer. A relatively small fragment was published posthumously.
Singer's memoirs are not only an engaging and masterfully written depiction of life in a traditional shtetl. Now that I.J. Singer's works are appearing one after another in translations into Russian, the reader will find in these memoirs an extensive self-commentary on the works of one of the most interesting Jewish prose writers of the 20th century.