S. Ansky Books

Considered by many to be the greatest Yiddish drama, A DYBBUK recounts the tale of a wealthy man's daughter possessed by the spirit of her dead beloved. "The translation of Joachim Neugroschel, savvily adapted by Tony Kushner, and now further revised by him as A DYBBUK OR BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, all come funnily, furiously, crotchetily alive." John Simon, New York Magazine "Kushner's contemporary reading has served to burnish the original's mixture of spiritual exhalation and material poverty, abstract symbolism and exotic superstition." J Hoberman, The Forward "S Ansky's mystical Yiddish drama THE DYBBUK is a play almost perfectly suited to Tony Kushner's tastes and talents. With its evocative picture of a metaphysical world that shadows our own, and the spiritual price to be paid for avaricious self-interest, it has intriguing correspondences with Kushner's own metaphysical epic, ANGELS IN AMERICA." Christopher Isherwood, Variety

Finally available in English, the great Yiddish writer's account of a neglected time and place In late 1914, S. Ansky, the influential Jewish-Russian journalist, playwright, and politician, received a commission: to organize desperately needed relief for Jews on the borderlands, who were caught between the warring armies of Russia, Germany, and the Austrian Empire. Thus began an extraordinary four-year journey meticulously documented by Ansky, a peerless witness of his time. In daily accounts, Ansky details his struggles: to raise funds; to lobby and bribe at the tsar's court; to procure and transport food, medicine, and money to the ravaged Jewish towns, which, in the course of the war, were conquered and reconquered by Cossacks, Germans, Polish mercenaries, and Russian revolutionaries. Ansky depicts scenes of devastation-convoys of refugees, towns looted and burned to the ground, villagers taken hostage and raped, prey to all comers. Speaking to maids and ministers, farmers and recruits, doctors and profiteers, Ansky hears and sees it all, as the tsar's army disintegrates and the winds of revolution sweep across the land. A wide-ranging view of a world at war, The Enemy at His Pleasure is at once powerful and poignant, a rare and invaluable addition to the historical record.