Background
He was born Yisruel Yehoyshye Zinger, the son of Pinchas Mendl Zinger, a rabbi and author of rabbinic commentaries, and Basheva Zylberman.
(In the Polish city of Lodz, the brothers Ashkenazi grew u...)
In the Polish city of Lodz, the brothers Ashkenazi grew up very differently in talent and in temperament. Max, the firstborn, is fiercely intelligent and conniving, determined to succeed financially by any means necessary. Slower-witted Jacob is strong, handsome, and charming but without great purpose in life. While Max is driven by ambition and greed to be more successful than his brother, Jacob is drawn to easy living and decadence. As waves of industrialism and capitalism flood the city, the brothers and their families are torn apart by the clashing impulses of old piety and new skepticism, traditional ways and burgeoning appetites, and the hatred that grows between faiths, citizens, and classes. Despite all attempts to control their destinies, the brothers are caught up by forces of history, love, and fate, which shape and, ultimately, break them. First published in 1936, The Brothers Ashkenazi quickly became a best seller as a sprawling family saga. Breaking away from the introspective shtetl tales of classic nineteenth-century writers, I. J. Singer brought to Yiddish literature the multilayered plots, large casts of characters, and narrative sweep of the traditional European novel. Walking alongside such masters as Zola, Flaubert, and Tolstoy, I . J. Singer’s premodernist social novel stands as a masterpiece of storytelling.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590512901/?tag=2022091-20
He was born Yisruel Yehoyshye Zinger, the son of Pinchas Mendl Zinger, a rabbi and author of rabbinic commentaries, and Basheva Zylberman.
Student Rabbinical Yeshivah School, Warsaw, 1906-1913.
He was the brother of author Isaac Bashevis Singer and novelist Esther Kreitman. Singer contributed to the European Yiddish press from 1916. In 1921, after Abraham Cahan noticed his story Pearls, Singer became a correspondent for the American Yiddish newspaper The Forward.
His short story Liuk appeared in 1924, illuminating the ideological confusion of the Bolshevik Revolution.
He wrote his first novel, Steel and Iron, in 1927. In 1934 he emigrated to the United States.
He died of a heart attack at age 50 in New York City in 1944. His memoir Fun a velt vos iz nishto mer (English: Of a World That is Number More) was published posthumously in 1946.
His other works include:
Shtol un Ayzn (1927).
Translated into English as Blood Harvest (1935)
Nay Rusland (Engineer: New Russia) (1928)
Yoshe Kalb (1932). Also titled The Sinners, Liveright Public., New York (1933)
The Brothers Ashkenazi (1936)
Friling (1937)
East of Eden, (originally titled Khaver Nachman) published by Alfred J. Knopf (1939)
The Family Carnovsky (1969) (originally titled Di mishpokhe Karnovski) (1943)
The River Breaks Up published by Alfred Knopf (1938). Republished by Vanguard Press, New York (1966)
Dertseylungen (English: Stories).
Published posthumously, 1949
In the introduction to A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg stated that Singer"s books are organized "in a way that satisfies the usual Western expectations as to literary structure.
His novels resemble the kind of family chronicle popular in Europe several decades ago ".
(In the Polish city of Lodz, the brothers Ashkenazi grew u...)
(Jewish and Polish cultures)
Member I. L. Peretz Jewish Writers Union.
Married Genie Kupferstock, May 12, 1923.