Nobel Prize in Literature Recipient. He received international recognition as a Polish-born Jewish-American author, who was the recipient of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Literature. According to the Nobel Prize committee, he received the award, "for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life." He is the only author to receive the Nobel Prize for being published in Yiddish, the language spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. Born Icek-Hersz Zynger in the village of Leoncin, near Warsaw, Poland, he was the son of a Hasidic Rabbi, who at one time practice in the city of Biłgoraj. In 1920 he entered the Tachkemoni Rabbinical Seminary for a short time, but rebelled against his family's wishes and left. In 1923, he moved to Warsaw where he worked as a proofreader for the "Literarische Bleter," a newspaper edited by his brother Israel. In addition, he translated German thrillers and classic novels into Yiddish. While in Warsaw in 1929, he met Rachel Pontsch, and the couple had a son, Israel Zamir, Singer's only child. At one point, he and Rachel separated with Rachel and his son escaping Poland to Russia before Palestine by way of Istanbul by 1938. Following in his footsteps, his son became a journalist, translator, and author, including his 1995 memoirs, "Journey of My Father". From 1933 to 1935, he was an associate editor of "Globus." He began to write under a pseudonym Icchok Bashevis. His first novel, "Satan in Goray," was published in Poland in 1932. In 1935, with Poland under threat of a Nazi Germany invasion with an antisemitic agenda, he escaped to the United States and settled with his brother in New York City, where he worked for the Yiddish-language newspaper "Forverts." His work would continue to largely be written in Yiddish. A practicing vegetarian, he became a naturalized American citizen in 1943. A collection of his stories in English, "Gimpel the Fool," was published in 1957. In his career, he published 18 novels, 14 children's books, a number of essays, articles, and reviews. Among his most important novels are "The Family Moskat" in 1950 (Di familye Mushkat), "The Magician of Lublin" in 1960, "The Slave" in 1962, "Der kuntsnmakher fun Lublin" in 1971 , and "Der knekht" in 1967. His final work was "Shadows on the Hudson," translated into English from the Yiddish, and published posthumously in 1998. Becoming the one whom Yiddishists call simply "Bashevis", he authored books, which compared Nazi concentration camp atrocities to the bloodbath inflicted on animals in slaughterhouses. In a town park in Biłgoraj, a city near the border of Poland and the Ukraine, is a tribute to him, consisting of a him donned in a dress suit, casually sitting on a bronze bench and holding a book. In 2016 a museum dedicated to him opened in a rebuilt wooden synagogue near the town park in Biłgoraj. In 2018 a commentative plaque honoring him was unveiled in Warsaw. The bronze abstracted sculpture of him by American artist Nathaniel Kaz received the Arts in Judaism Award in 1966 and was appraised at $10,000. Besides the Nobel Prize, he received many accolades including the prestigious National Book Award prize, first in 1970 for creativity for children and again as a lifetime achievement award in 1974. In 1975 he received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. After a nearly seventy-year successful career, he died from the many complications of the elderly including dementia.