"The Yiddish writer Lili Berger (1916–1996) grew up in Poland but survived the Holocaust in France, where she was involved in the rescue of Jewish children. A devoted Communist, she returned to Poland in 1949. She wrote articles, short stories, and novels there until the 1968 anti-Zionist campaign forced her back to Paris. Women writers are seriously under-represented in the Yiddish literary canon, as are writers working after the Second World War. Berger was one of the most important Yiddish writers who returned to live in Communist Poland and one of very few who stayed into the 1950s, which makes her work a unique window into Polish Jewish life. This collection is a selection of representative works from across Berger’s oeuvre, including sections on Jewish life in pre- and postwar Poland, the Holocaust, the arts and literature, and short fiction. The translations themselves are complemented by an introduction to Berger and her work written by the editors, annotations of each translation with citations and explanatory notes, and an epilogue addresses Berger’s reception in the Yiddish press. In addition to introducing an understudied Yiddish woman writer to English audiences, the book serves as a source in twentieth-century Jewish history. While the editors approach Berger from the perspective of literary and women’s studies, many of the essays address subjects of interest in Polish and Jewish literary, intellectual, and social history."--