The Certificate
by Isaac Bashevis Singer
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It's 1922 and David Bendiger, an aspiring eighteen-and-a-half-year-old writer, arrives in Warsaw, penniless and homeless. His only contacts are Sonya, a young woman with whom he has had amorous dealings in the village they have left, and a Zionist functionary who informs him he has qualified for a certificate permitting him to emigrate to Palestine. But in order to make the journey David must enter into a fictitious marriage with a woman so eager to get to Palestine that she will pay all the show more expenses. While David waits for his certificate, he becomes involved not only with Sonya but with Edusha, the sexually avant-garde Communist Party member in whose apartment he finds a temporary haven; and with Minna, the well-to-do young woman who wants to join her fiance in Palestine and agrees to "marry" David. Grappling with romantic, political, and youthful turmoil, David also confronts his literary future and religious past when his older brother - a writer disillusioned by a recent sojourn in Russia - and his father, an Orthodox rabbi, both turn up in Warsaw. The Certificate was serialized in Yiddish in 1967, but may have been written much earlier. The translator, Leonard Wolf, in a postscript calls it "a very young man's book" and "certainly the most playful of Singer's long fictions", with its alternately comic and poignant shifts in plot. Young David's passions for women, philosophizing, Jewish religious speculation, and Walter Mitty-like fantasies make The Certificate a captivating novel in the great tradition of a master storyteller. show lessTags
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David Bendinger, de 18 años, llega a Varsovia sin un quinto y planea viajar a la Tierra Prometida y hacerse escritor. Está confundido como el carajo y permanentemente encerrado en un triángulo amoroso que más bien parece un poliedro.
La primera vez que leí esta novela, el personaje principal me parecía tan cercano, sus preocupaciones eran tan mías, que no podía evitar imaginarme a mí mismo en la piel de David Bendinger. No recordaba bien el argumento, pero sí recordaba perfectamente cómo me hizo sentir este libro.
Ahora, con veinte años a cuestas, esta novela no ha dejado de conmoverme y hacerme muy feliz con cada página. El libro llegó a mis manos por casualidad, hace muchos años, y hoy la leo por segunda vez, satisfecho show more de tener una parte de mí encerrada en estas casi trescientas páginas.
Singer se mantiene como uno de mis escritores favoritos, y El certificado se queda en mi puño de libros que bien podrían servirme de epitafio. show less
La primera vez que leí esta novela, el personaje principal me parecía tan cercano, sus preocupaciones eran tan mías, que no podía evitar imaginarme a mí mismo en la piel de David Bendinger. No recordaba bien el argumento, pero sí recordaba perfectamente cómo me hizo sentir este libro.
Ahora, con veinte años a cuestas, esta novela no ha dejado de conmoverme y hacerme muy feliz con cada página. El libro llegó a mis manos por casualidad, hace muchos años, y hoy la leo por segunda vez, satisfecho show more de tener una parte de mí encerrada en estas casi trescientas páginas.
Singer se mantiene como uno de mis escritores favoritos, y El certificado se queda en mi puño de libros que bien podrían servirme de epitafio. show less
Premio Nobel de Literatura 1978. Al joven judío David Bendinger le conceden un certificado de emigración para entrar en Palestina y dejar Varsovia, pero como no puede costearse el pasaje debe buscar a una mujer que también quiera emigrar y esté dispuesta a pasarse con él y pagarle el viaje. Atribulado ya por las dudas propias de la juventud, David conoce a tres mujeres muy distintas con las que mantendrá una turbulenta relación amorosa.
Jul 14, 2022Spanish
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Author Information
381+ Works 23,910 Members
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-91) was the author of many novels, stories, children's books, and memoirs. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. (Publisher Provided) Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in Radzymin, Poland on July 14, 1904. He received a traditional Jewish education, including training at the rabbinical seminary in Warsaw. He show more began writing in Hebrew while he worked for 10 years as a proofreader and translator in Warsaw. In 1935, he immigrated to New York, where he became a journalist for the Daily Forward, America's largest Yiddish newspaper. Most of his stories were originally published in this newspaper in serial form. His first novel, The Family Moskat, was published in 1950. His other works include The Magician of Lublin, The Spinoza of Market Street, The Slave, and A Friend of Kafka. A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw won the National Book Award for children's literature. He received numerous awards during his lifetime including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978 and the Gold Medal for Fiction in 1989. He died after suffering a series of strokes on July 24, 1991. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Keltainen kirjasto (266)
Gallimard, Folio (2686)
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Lupakirja
- Original title
- Der Certificat
- People/Characters
- David Bendiner
- Important places
- Warsaw, Poland
- First words
- "It's late - it's late for everything," I said to myself.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)It was a crowded line but - since time did not exist - what difference did it make how long I waited?
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- General Fiction, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 839.0933 — Literature & rhetoric German & related literatures Other Germanic literatures - Yiddish Fiction 1860-
- LCC
- PJ5129 .S49 .T7513 — Language and Literature Oriental languages and literatures Oriental philology and literature Hebrew Other languages used by Jews Yiddish
- BISAC
Statistics
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- 264
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- 122,317
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.73)
- Languages
- 11 — Albanian, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 20
- ASINs
- 2
