A Young Man In Search of Love

A Young Man in Search of Love is the second volume of Isaac Bashevis Singer's autobiography, published in the momentous year he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. This intimate memoir chronicles Singer's life as a struggling young writer in 1930s Warsaw, capturing a world and culture that would soon be destroyed forever.

The narrative follows Singer as he lives on the margins of his successful older brother I.J. Singer's literary circle, working as a careless proofreader for a pittance and often down to his last zloty. Unlike the confident intellectuals at the Writers Club with their ready political affiliations and conversational ease, the young Singer is plagued by philosophical doubts, youthful skepticism, and classic insecurities.

The book's title announces its central theme: Singer's quest for love in all its forms—physical, romantic, spiritual, and artistic. He finds himself pursued by three very different women: one seeking only physical passion, another offering genuine love, and a third proposing a marriage of convenience to obtain a passport to Palestine. Each relationship forces him to confront his own nature and desires.

Beyond the personal drama, Singer grapples with larger questions: What does it mean to write in Yiddish when the language seems to be dying? How can one remain an artist in a world increasingly dominated by politics—whether Zionism, socialism, or communism? How does one maintain faith in an age of doubt? These philosophical and spiritual questions run throughout the narrative, interwoven with vivid portraits of Warsaw's Jewish quarter and its colorful inhabitants.

Singer writes with characteristic honesty about his poverty, his sexual experiences, his literary ambitions, and his spiritual struggles. He resolves to become "a narrator of human passion," but finds that demons—both literal and figurative—conspire against him. Buttons fall off at inopportune moments, shoelaces come untied, and the supernatural forces from Jewish folklore seem to intrude into everyday life.

This book appeared in 1978, the same year Singer received the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life." The Swedish Academy specifically praised Singer's ability to bring the vanished world of East European Jewry to life through his fiction and autobiography.

In his Nobel lecture, Singer devoted much of his speech to the Yiddish language, saying: "In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful humanity." This book, with its frank discussion of Singer's commitment to writing in Yiddish despite predictions of the language's death, illuminates his lifelong devotion to preserving and celebrating Yiddish culture.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1991) was born in Poland and spent his formative years in Warsaw's Jewish quarter. He immigrated to the United States in 1935 and wrote for the Jewish Daily Forward, a Yiddish newspaper in New York, for the rest of his life. Although he lived in New York for over fifty years, he continued to write primarily in Yiddish, personally supervising the English translations of his work.

Singer is the only American Nobel laureate in Literature who wrote primarily in a language other than English. His fiction and memoirs draw deeply on the East European Jewish folklore, mysticism, and cultural traditions of the world he left behind—a world that was largely destroyed during the Holocaust. His stories are known for their blend of realism and the supernatural, their frank treatment of sexuality, and their psychological depth.
Singer received two National Book Awards (1970 and 1974) and the Nobel Prize in 1978. His works include novels such as The Family Moskat (1950), The Magician of Lublin (1960), and Enemies: A Love Story (1972), as well as numerous short story collections and books for children.

A Young Man in Search of Love is the second volume of Singer's three-part autobiography:
In My Father's Court (1966) - covering his childhood in Warsaw
A Young Man in Search of Love (1978) - his years as a struggling writer
Lost in America (1981) - his immigration to America

We have several other Singer volumes in our shop, including In My Father's Court, so let us know if you're interested in other titles.

The illustrations in this volume are by Raphael Soyer.
The book is illustrated throughout with paintings and drawings by Raphael Soyer (1899-1987), an American artist of Russian-Jewish heritage and a friend of Singer's. Soyer was known for his realistic portrayals of urban working-class life and was an important figure in American Social Realism.