Translators Ellen Cassedy and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub present “Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories by Blume Lempel,” just published by Dryad Press and Mandel Vilar Press. Cynthia Ozick calls the book “a splendid surprise.”

ABOUT BLUME LEMPEL

Blume Lempel (1907-1999) was a master of stream-of-consciousness, flashback, free association and eroticism—all rare in Yiddish literature. Her modern short-story style was appropriate to her themes, which were often daring: incest—Oedipus in Brooklyn (1981), rape—Aleyn in Eynem (Alone Together, 1989) and the ambivalent attraction of one woman to another (Correspondents, 1992).

Although she also wrote personalized Holocaust stories, many of her settings were very American. She blended feelings about the songs of Frank Sinatra with thoughts of a lover, her sick mother, her stepmother, and other memories glimpsed as if in a cracked mirror (“Gezangen nit Derzungen”; Songs One Has Not Finished Singing). She said her modern style developed subconsciously. “I feel I do not borrow from anyone.”