The First Yiddish Bestseller and Its Forgotten Author

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the death of the Russian Jewish writer Jacob Dinezon, who in 1877 authored Yiddish literature’s first bestselling novel, The Dark Young Man. Unlike his close friends, the Yiddish literary figures Y.L. Peretz and S. An-sky—the three are buried together in a Warsaw mausoleum—Dinezon is hardly remembered today, and even among scholars few read his work. Reviewing a recent translation of the book by Tina Lunson, Rokhl Kafrissen compares it with the early work of Dinezon’s contemporary Mendele Mokher Sforim, the so-called “grandfather” of Yiddish literature: