Passions and Other Stories

In this masterly collection of stories, Isaac Bashevis Singer weaves bewitching fables from seemingly ordinary lives, showing with subtlety and compassion humanity at its most mundane and mysterious. From modern apartments in Miami to nineteenth-century Polish villages, from bravery in wartime Warsaw to a different kind of courage in Lisbon, these tales span the world and the range of human life. The collection deals with the inexhaustibly baffling passions, problems, and personalities of Yiddish-speaking Jews in both the old country and the new.

“Through the twenty stories, Singer continues to evolve his characters with the sustained scrutiny of kinship and a candlelit intimacy. Physical presences, speech and circumstances flicker into being as sharply as that cosmic instant in each tale.” —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)