From bestselling, controversial Yiddish writer and Nobel Prize–winner Isaac Bashevis Singer comes a little gem of a book about a hapless yet charmingly resilient baker who is the butt of every joke—until one day the devil shows up and invites him to take revenge.
Singer’s folktale-like story, “Gimpl Tam,” was first published in an obscure Yiddish-language journal on March 30, 1945—about a month before the Nazi surrender. Nine years later, Saul Bellow translated the story into English, introducing Singer to an audience of American Jewish readers. Gimpl’s predicament has since come to be seen as a symbol of the diaspora. What role should a minority people play in the face of aggression?
Today, “Gimpl Tam” is one of the most influential and beloved stories in the canon of twentieth-century literature, taught in high schools and colleges, endlessly discussed, and even analyzed from a Talmudic perspective. But Bellow’s translation, which was done without Singer’s involvement, has been accused of christening the language to make it palatable for a mass readership.
In 1991, before his death at the age of 88, Singer (whose relationship with Bellow was complicated, to say the least) sat down to write his own translation. The definitive bilingual edition of Simple Gimpl brings the Yiddish original alongside both Singer’s and Bellow’s renditions, beautiful drawings by award-winning New Yorker illustrator Liana Finck, and an essay by scholar David Stromberg, who completed and edited Singer’s translation. The volume introduces new readers to Singer’s talents as a storyteller, inspires conversation about the role of translation, especially of endangered languages like Yiddish, and confirms the value of individual integrity and the steadfastness of individuals and minority communities under duress.
Simple Gimpl is published on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Restless Books with the generous support of David Bruce Smith and the Grateful American Foundation, Dean and Annette Cycon, and Terry Philip Segal in honor of Joseph Lieberman.
Join us in celebrating Simple Gimpl with these in-person events!
Brooklyn
On March 23rd at 7:00 p.m. EST, Brooklyn Jews and Community Bookstore present A Night with David Stromberg and Val Vinokur at Congregation Beth Elohim.Boston
On March 27th from 7:00–8:00 p.m. EST, Harvard Bookstore presents David Stromberg and Jamaica Kincaid in conversation about the art of translation, Singer’s legacy, and much more.