Product Description

Tells the story of the prosperous Moskat family, Polish Jews living in Warsaw between the dawn of the 20th century and the gloom of 1939. Characters in this novel include saints and swindlers, tough Zionists and mystic philosophers, and medieval Rabbis and ultra-modern painters.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #201779 in Books
• Published on: 2000-12-07
• Original language: Yiddish
• Binding: Paperback
• 624 pages

From the Publisher
An extraordinary masterpiece
'A masterpiece' Sunday Times

In a magnificent work of the imagination, Isaac Bashevis Singer brings to life the decline of the prosperous Moskat family, Polish Jews living in Warsaw between the dawn of the twentieth century and the gloom of 1939. On a vast breathtaking background, saints mingle with swindlers, tough Zionists with mystic philosophers, and medieval rabbis rub shoulders with ultra-modern painters. A novel on the grandest scale, The Family Moskat is a work of high entertainment and a deeply moving chronicle of people's disappointments and passions.

'Whatever region his writing inhabits, it is blazing with life and actuality' Ted Hughes, New York Review of Books

'He makes most contemporary practitioners of the art of fiction look like singers with only one song' Guardian

Customer Reviews

Masterful stuff from the Big Man
From the very first paragraph, the economy of Singer's writing takes the breath away. So much information is packed in, with barely a word wasted. Read the first paragraph again when you've finished the novel - you'll see what I mean. One finds one's head spinning. Despite the rather slow start (understandable given the scope of the underaking - it's a hefty tome!), Singer soon ups the pace as the story begins to bound forward with each new, deftly assembled chapter.

In anybody else's hands, this story of a Warsaw Jewish dynasty from the last days of its "golden era" to the verge of destruction at the hands of the Nazis would struggle to avoid appearing trite, melodramatic and overly ambitious. But Singer's taut and elliptical evocation of historical dangers (we never actually experience the First World War or the Russian Revolution at first hand, and we never get to see the Germans) brilliantly ratchets up the drama and tension without succumbing to melodrama, as we share the characters' experience of history from the inside.

Throughout the novel, pessimism (who could avoid a degree of pessimism in light of what we all know happened to Poland's Jews?) battles for elbow room with the lusty - but by now fading - glories of Warsaw Jewish life. While the action remains resolutely in Poland, only rarely venturing away from the Warsaw region, emigration to Palestine repeatedly features as a double-edged sword of an escape route.

God knows what it would look like if they ever made a movie of it. Or have they made one? I think I prefer not to know.

The characterisation, as usual, is brillant. As the parade of vividly-imagined personalities staggers down through the first part of the 20th century, we marvel at their complexity, and our sympathies waver as Singer nudges them first one way, then another. What does he really want us to make of the pessimistic "philosopher" (and key character) Asa Heshel Bannet? Singer can rarely have realised so difficult a portrayal so convincingly.

As the survivors of the family's tribulations live through the start of the second world war, the breathless and brilliantly handled conclusion still manages to surprise. I won't spoil it.
Read more I.B. Singer, learn more about loads of stuff you never thought related to you. They ain't thrillers or airport novels, but they'll enrich your life.