Book Description

Zalman Vendrof (also spelled Wendroff, 1877-1971) was born in a small town in Belorussia and moved to Lodz, Poland, at the age of sixteen. There he came under the spell of literature, and he read voraciously -- from classics to popular fiction, from Russian epics to poetry. But the writer who inspired Vendrof most was Sholem Aleichem, whose stories of shtetl life seemed to come straight from his own youth. It was partly because of his admiration of Sholem Aleichem that Zalman Vendrof became a writer himself, and, like Aleichem, Vendrof usually wrote in the Yiddish language. His stories were published in the Yiddish press throughout Europe, the United States, and South America. Vendrof spent time in Britain and in the United States, but in 1918 he settled in Moscow, where he lived for the rest of his life. The life of a Yiddish writer in Soviet Russia was not an easy one, and Vendrof was imprisoned in 1950, along with many of his colleagues. He may have been the only one to survive, and he was not released until after Stalin's death. During his lifetime Zalman Vendrof's stories were translated into several language, including Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, and German; but his works were never translated into English. Now, thanks to the devotion and efforts of his great-niece, Irene Jerison, Vendrof's stories can be read in the English language. Her translations bring to a whole new audience a writer whose stories are both important historically and highly entertaining. Book jacket.