Satan in Goray

Just finished reading Isaac Bashevis Singer's "Satan in Goray" for my Russian lit class, Literature of Destruction. The novel was written in Yiddish in 1955.

This apocalyptic novel takes place in 1648 in Goray, Poland. Goray is a small Jewish town "at the end of the world" (a deliberately ambiguous phrase, it can mean either temporally or spatially or both). Many of the Orthodox residents become convinced that the end of the world is at hand after hearing news of Sabbatai Zevi, a rabbi who has proclaimed himself the Messiah. Zeal for the end of days leads Goray into depravity and madness.

This book is fantastic, I highly recommend it! I particularly recommend it if you liked:

-- "Everything is Illuminated," (2002) by Jonathon Safran Foer, which clearly took a lot from this work.
-- "One Hundred Years of Solitude," (1967) by Gabriel García Márquez. (Jesse, don't be deterred.)