Esther Kreitman’s fiction explores the realities of Jewish life in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Uncompromising in her critique of injustice and hypocrisy, she exposes the emptiness of those who maintain nothing of Judaism but rituals devoid of meaning. She insists on the dignity of those denied opportunity: the poor, women, and all excluded from modern education.
Her characters love and work, despair and rebel as they move through
the streets and homes of the shtetl, Warsaw, Antwerp, and London.
Collected Works presents – for the first time in English – the full range of Kreitman’s prose: her two novels, a collection of short stories, previously unpublished and untranslated stories and essays, and more. Together, these works reveal the power of her literary imagination.
If Kreitman’s literary reputation was long overshadowed by that of her brothers – Israel Joshua Singer and Isaac Bashevis Singer – it is largely because that was the fate of many women writers of Yiddish prose. In her own day, and again in ours, her work is urgent in its fearless engagement with class, gender, and beliefs. It is not only a sharp social critique, but also a literature of rebellion, empathy, and a desire to see and speak the truth.
