First published in 1957 by Noonday Press, Isaac Bashevis Singer's first collection of stories, Gimpel the Fool, is a landmark work that has attracted international acclaim. The title story follows the exploits of Gimpel, an ingenuous baker who is universally deceived but who declines to retaliate against his tormentors. Gimpel and the protagonists of the other stories all inhabit the distinctive pre-World War II shtetls of Poland and, beyond that, the larger world created by Singer's unforgettable prose. Praise: "These stories are a unique blend of lyric mysticism and earthy realism in characters that are universal human symbols of the worldly and the supernatural. Fantasy is Singer's surest guide to truth in literature." - Anzia Yezierska, The New York Times Review of Books "Extraordinarily beautiful... It's the integrity of the human imagination that Singer conveys so beautifully." - Alfred Kazin, The New Leader "Singer is a genius. He has total command of his imagined world." - Irving Howe, The New Republic "A peerless storyteller, Singer restores the sheer enchantment with story, with outcome, with what-happens-next that has been denied most readers since their adolescence." - David Boroff, Saturday Review

An authentic literary great, Singer was an author whose extraordinary talents won him a worldwide audience. And with this impressive novel, he proved that he was at the height of his creative power until his recent death at age 86. Scum evokes the teeming life of 1906 Warsaw's backstreets. Max Barabander, distraught over the recent death of his son, flees the life of wealth and respectability he has attained in Buenos Aires, to return to the poverty and shadows of his youth spent in Warsaw. He fears impotence which leads him to the pursuit of mindless sex with five different women who view him only as an escape from their drab lives. The author recalls the teeming life of 1906 Jewish Warsaw in this impressive novel of changing mores and values. . .