Translated by Dorothy Thompson ..'Many years ago there lived in Zuchnow, in
Russia, a man named Mendel Singer. He was pious, God-fearing and ordinary,
an entirely commonplace Jew . . . ' ..So Roth begins his novel about the
loss of faith and the experience of suffering. His modern Job goes through
his trials in the ghettos of Tsarist Russia and on the unforgiving streets
of New York. Mendel Singer loses his family, falls terribly ill and is
badly abused. He needs a miracle . . . ..Thomas Mann wrote of this novel:
'It is not possible to do justice to its poetic subtlety, but I can vouch
for its extraordinary literary merits.'