Master of dreams

the long version

Through a series of poignant and striking vignettes, Master of Dreams describes how Telushkin became Singer's assistant, then his editor, and after five years, his translator. And finally, she became the one person to whom Singer taught his craft as a writer. Throughout her tenure with Singer, Telushkin kept detailed diaries chronicling both their literary efforts and the evolution of their personal relationship. With this affectionate assessment of the later years of Singer's life, Telushkin reveals the brilliant but troubled Nobel laureate in all his complexity. Included here are many of the great moments in Singer's life - his winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978, his fiery encounter with then-Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, and his surprising meeting with Barbra Streisand, who adapted and starred in the movie version of Singer's short story "Yentl." But Master of Dreams reveals the private Singer as well, the "merry pessimist" haunted by despair and torn between the old-world ethics of his Hasidic forebears in Europe and the moral abandon of modern secular man.