The Context of Dance of Genghis Cohn & Satan in Goray (Essay Sample)

The Dance of Genghis Cohn & Satan in Goray
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course Name
Professor’s Name
Date
The Dance of Genghis Cohn & Satan in Goray
Introduction
Romain Gary, a Lithuanian-born writer, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, an American-polish writer, are undoubtedly two of the most famous and prolific novelists that the world has ever seen. The former's crowning moments in his life were when he received the coveted Prix Goncourt prize twice, while the latter's crowning moment in his life is when he received the 1978's Nobel Prize for Literature. Of the many fascinating works of these prime figures, this paper will only look at one from each: "The Dance of Genghis Cohn" by Romain Gary and "Satan in Goray" by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
The Dance of Genghis Cohn was initially published in French in the year 1967. A year later, Romain Gary, with Camilla Sykes's assistance, translated it from French to English. The novel serves as an extended essay on the problems that the writer believed were posed for European civilization by the Holocaust. At the same time, it serves as a detective novel. Its story revolves around a Holocaust victim that later becomes a Nazi Commandant’s dybbuk. On the other hand, the original publication of Satan in Goray, which was Singer's published work, was done in Yiddish in the year 1933. Later, it was translated by Jacob Sloan from Yiddish to English in 1983. The novel captures the fever of longing for salvation that possessed central Europe's Jewish population after the Chmielnicki massacres' dark decade. This paper aims to describe the context of the two works and highlight their similarities and contradictions.