Product Description

"A piercing work of fiction with a strong claim to being Singer's masterpiece" - Richard Bernstein, "The New York Times". 'Shadows On The Hudson" traces the intertwined lives of a group of Jewish refugees in New York City in the late 1940s. At its centre is Boris Makaver, a pious, wealthy businessman whose greatest trial is his unstable daughter, Anna. A chain of events disrupts the lives of the close-knit community as each refugee struggles to reconcile the horrific past with the difficult present, as Singer explores both the nature of faith and the nature of love in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #238753 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

About the Author
* Although Isaac Bashevis Singer emigrated from Poland to the United States in 1935, the circumscribed world of the Polish Jews remained at the heart of his imagination. Beginning with his first major work, Satan in Goray (1935), he used the life of the shtetl as raw material, transforming its folkways, religious practices, superstitions, and sexual habits into superior works of art. From time to time, however, Singer turned his eye upon New World Jews like himself, recording their rapid or reluctant assimilation into the American mainstream. One such book is SHADOWS ON THE HUDSON * He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978

Customer Reviews

A fascinating philosophical and historical work
The scope of this novel is magnificent. Set in New York in the 1940s, it begins with a dinner party attended by a handful of Jewish intellectuals and then follows the fate of these contrasting characters. Throughout their various journeys, they never stop questioning themselves and the modern world, troubled by the holocaust and the weight of the Jewish tradition that many of them have rejected. Most of the characters were born in Poland in the Jewish shtetl, where life was insular and simple. Arriving in New York they are faced with a different world entirely, and its picture painted by Singer is not a pretty one. Morality and humility are lost and replaced with money and desire. Grein, the central character, acts on his impulses, leaving his wife and children for a younger woman, a former pupil and the daughter of a religious friend of his. As we follow his passions and his wanderings, we are also subject to his emotional and philosophical turmoil. His strife is the backbone of the novel, as he attempts to resolve the Jewish tradition, God, humanity, the holocaust, his desires, and modern society. I have not been so absorbed and fascinated by a book for a long time, and highly recommend it. It is a dark yet uplifting book, a bleak look at enlightenment.

a very long book
While acknowledging that Bashevis Singer is a author of repute, this book is truly heavy going; not because of the content, but I think, because of the awful translation. It is clumsy and feels crude; there is no beauty in the words or scenes painted. It all feels awkward and as if the translator was struggling to find how to translate what was said. This version would put me off Bashevis Singer for life, had I not read lots of others many years ago.