Sholem Asch (1880–1957) was born in Białystok, Poland. His father, known as "Ha-Cohen" ("the rich man"), was a successful merchant. He had 15 children with several women. Sholem's mother, known as "Klara" ("the beautiful one"), died when he was nine years old
Sholem was the only boy in an Orthodox Jewish family. His father wanted him to become a rabbi, but he preferred to be a writer. At the age of 15, Sholem went to work for his maternal uncle in Warsaw, where he became a translator and journalist for several Russian publications. He moved to London in 1899 and there became friends with such writers as H.
G. Wells and Jack London. In 1907 he moved to Paris and met such writers as Turgenev, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. In 1911 Sholem published his first novel in Russian, "Kleine Joodse Verhalen (A Little Jewish Tales)," and three years later his second one, "Het Achterhuis (The House Behind)." The latter won the Prix Femina in 1913 and was translated into English by Bernard Frechtman in 1916 under the title "The Diary of a Young Girl." The winner of the 1914 Nobel Prize in Literature, Franz Kafka, wrote the preface to the English edition.
In 1916 Asch left for America where he published his fourth book "The Form of Fable," which received good reviews from such critics as John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway. He also published his own newspaper "The New Yorker," which became so popular that it ran out of newsprint and had to be reprinted regularly because readers clamored for more issues. The New Yorker ceased publication in 1939 at the height of World War II when its editor William Shawn went to work for the Office of War Information (OWI).
In London during World War II Asch worked on behalf of OWI translating English works into Yiddish for distribution by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). When he returned to America after 1945 Asch began writing fiction again. His books include: "The Patagonia" (1936); "God Cried" (1944); "The Lost Treasure" (1945); "Hershkowitz Reunion" (1945); Toldot Yaakov Yosef (The Life of Jacob Joseph
Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.Sholem Asch
Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.Sholem Asch
Not the power to remember but its very opposite the power to forget is a necessary condition for our existence.Sholem Asch
It has been said that writing comes more easily if you have something to say.Sholem Asch
