In my father's court - Isaac Bashevis Singer

In this autobiographical work, specifically mentioned in Issac Bashevis Singer's Nobel Prize citation, Singer remembers his childhood in Warsaw, and especially the bet din, or Jewish Court, in his father's home on working-class Krochmalna Street. Advice seekers and petitioners making wills or seeking marriage settlements daily visit the rabbi in his study. In a world on the brink of modernity, Singer's gentle, learned father and his mother, equally pious but eminently practical, maintain a stubbornly traditional existence. In My Father's Court is a tribute to their efforts, and a fine evocation of life in early-twentieth century Warsaw.

Issac Bashevis Singer was born in Poland in 1904, and emigrated to the United States in 1935, shortly after his first novel, Satan in Goray, had been published in instalments. In 1943 he became a US citizen, but he continued to write almost exclusively in Yiddish, personally supervising the translation of his works into English. In 1978 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Issac Bashevis Singer died in Florida in 1991.