The Family Moskat

The vanished way of life of Eastern European Jews in the early part of the twentieth century is the subject of this extraordinary novel. All the strata of this complex society were populated by powerfully individual personalities, and the whole community pulsated with life and vitality. The affairs of the patriarchal Meshulam Moskat and the unworldly Asa Heshel Bannet provide the center of the book, but its real focus is the civilization that was destroyed forever in the gas chambers of the Second World War.

“Singer's deep-running narrative makes a microcosm of the Warsaw ghetto. Reminiscent in scope of the great Russian novels of the nineteenth century, his novel moves with the leisure of abundance--eddying, pausing, plunging. Its surface ripples with passages of delicate description, trenchant dialogue and precisely observed detail; its depths roll forward with the heavy, hidden surge of life itself.” —Time