Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904¿1991) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. An immigrant from Poland, he arrived in New York following the steps of his older brother, Israel Joshua Singer. He wrote essays, stories, and other writings for the Forverts, at times under pseudonym. Saul Bellow translated his story ¿Gimpel the Fool,¿ which heralded his talent for a young generation of American Jewish readers. For years Singer published his stories in The New Yorker, where he developed a distinct style. His numerous books include Satan in Goray (1935), Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories (1957), The Magician of Lublin (1960), The Slave (1962), The Spinoza of Market Street (1963), A Friend of Kafka and Other Stories (1970), Enemies, a Love Story (1972), Old Love (1979), and Shadows on the Hudson (1997). His work has been translated into dozens of languages.

Saul Bellow (1915 - 2005) was born of Russian Jewish parents in Lachine, Quebec, and was raised in Chicago. He received his bachelor¿s degree from Northwestern University in 1937. His novel The Adventures of Augie March won the National Book Award for fiction in 1954. His further awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Humboldt¿s Gift (1975); the International Literary Prize for Herzog, for which he became the first American recipient; and the Croix de Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, the highest literary distinction awarded by France to non-citizens. In 1976, Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Liana Finck is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, The Awl, and Catapult. She is a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and a Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists. She has had artist residencies with the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Tablet magazine. Her first book, A Bintel Brief, was published in 2014.

David Stromberg, a writer, translator, and literary scholar, is editor for the Isaac Bashevis Singer Literary Trust. His books include Baddies, Idiot Love and the Elements of Intimacy, and A Short Inquiry into the End of the World. He is the editor of Old Truths and New Clichés: Essays by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Princeton, 2022).

Editor¿s Note
Ilan Stavans

Gimpel the Fool
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Translated from the Yiddish by Saul Bellow

Simple Gimpl
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Translated from the Yiddish by Isaac Bashevis Singer and David Stromberg

Afterword
David Stromberg

¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿
¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿

About the Author, Translators, and Illustrator