The Family Mashber

Der Nister (1884–1950) was the pen name used by Pinhas Kahanovitch, a Yiddish writer, philosopher, translator, critic, and key figure in modernist literature in Kiev in the 1920s. In 1921, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, Der Nister left Russia and settled in Germany, where he published two collections of stories. In 1927, he returned to the Soviet Union, where his work was declared reactionary by the Soviet regime and its literary critics. He was arrested in 1949 and died in a Soviet prison hospital in 1950.

Leonard Wolf is a much-published writer of poetry, fiction, social history, and biography, and a leading translator of Yiddish literature. He lives in New York City.

David Malouf is a novelist and poet. His novel The Great World was awarded the Commonwealth Prize and Remembering Babylon was short-listed for the Booker Prize. He has received the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He lives in Sydney, Australia.