'Old Truths and New Cliches' is made up almost entirely of works previously unpublished in English handpicked by the Nobel laureate and edited by scholar David Stromberg
In his 1978 acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Isaac Bashevis Singer employed memories from his earliest years as a source of hope for coping with the troubles of modern times:
“In our home and in many other homes the eternal questions were more actual than the latest news in the Yiddish newspaper,” he said. “In spite of all the disenchantments and all my skepticism I believe that the nations can learn much from those Jews, their way of thinking, their way of bringing up children, their finding happiness where others see nothing but misery and humiliation.”
As a teenager, in the midst of the First World War, Singer moved with his siblings and his mother to her hometown, the small shtetl of Biłgoraj, where they belonged to a prominent rabbinical family.