Overview
Set in New York City in the late forties, Shadows on the Hudson presents the inter-twined lives of a group of prosperous Jewish refugees. Boris Makaver is the center of the circle, a pious and wealthy businessman. His greatest trial is his daughter, Anna, unlucky in her choice of husbands. Married first to Yasha Kotik, a lunatic actor, and then to a hapless, unemployed attorney, she plans to escape with Hertz Grein, a man torn between ascetic yearnings and romantic entanglements. Amid family quarrels and religious debates, marriages of love and convenience are attempted and abandoned, lovers separate, and spouses die or even manage to return from the dead.Synopsis
Serialized in the late 1950s, Shadows On The Hudson was translated from Yiddish and published posthumously as a complete novel in 1998, receiving widespread literary acclaim. From the Upper West Side to Miami's pastel resorts, Shadows On The Hudson traces the intertwined destiny of survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer has created a vibrant, resonant, and provocative cast of characters in search of answers to life's greatest dilemmas, challenges, and ironies.
Library Journal
Originally published serially in Yiddish in The Forward, this novel by Nobel Prize Laureate Singer relates the lives of Jewish refugees in New York City just after World War II. Wealthy and religious Boris Makaver is challenged by the scandal created when his daughter Anna abandons her second husband, an unemployed lawyer, for a friend of the family, Grein. The latter is torn by his inability to resist the romantic demands of three women (his wife, his long-time mistress, and Anna) and his attempts to return to the religious faith of his father. The lingering effects of the losses in the Holocaust and the influence of communism and godlessness combine with staged seances and the reappearance of Anna's unsavory first husband to provide much spiritual searching. This major novel is a welcome addition to the Singer library. Recommended for public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/97.]Ann Irvine, Silver Spring Lib., Md.