The Penitent by Issac Bashevis Singer - 1973

Issac Singer (1902-1991-born Poland) won the Nobel Prize in 1986 for the full body of his work. He is best known to the general public as the author of Yentil, the basis for a very popular movie. Singer's, even though he left Poland in 1935 because of the rise of the Nazis, work is very rooted in the culture in which he was raised. He became an American citizen. Singer died and is buried in Florida. . He indicated his biggest influences as a short story writer were Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant

Harold Bloom's New York Times Review 

Bloom completely trashes The Penitent- 

"The Penitent is a translation of a short novel called ''Der Baal Tshuve'' in Yiddish. Perhaps this title should have been translated as ''The Master of Turning,'' which would have been more literal and also a proper tribute to its distinguished author, who is a master of metamorphoses. But perhaps this book, first published in 1974, ought not to have been translated at all. It is a very unpleasant work, without any redeeming esthetic merit or humane quality. Singer's best book, retroactively worthy of the Nobel Prize he won in 1978, was his ''Collected Stories,'' published last year. ''The Penitent,'' a failed attempt at a Swiftian diatribe against the contemporary world, is his worst book, and yet it does expose limitations that are not Singer's alone, and so it sadly defines much that is uneasy and probably insoluble in the dilemmas of Jewish culture at this time." Harold Bloom-September 25, 1983

After reading Bloom's review I am a bit at a loss. I thought why post on the book if it is totally without merit. Then felt one of my blog goals is to jounalize my reading. 

Bloom says Singer's Collected Stories are worthy of his Nobel Prize