Happiness and Other Fictions

Hersh Dovid Nomberg

Translated by Daniel Kennedy

Happiness and friendship; love and beauty; art and revolution—these and other themes are investigated by the sometimes caustic, sometimes lyrical pen of Yiddish writer Hersh Dovid Nomberg (1876–1927).

From unhealthy friendships, debauchery and petty rivalry, to cramped rooms, fever dreams and creeping dread, this collection of nineteen texts, compiled and translated by Daniel Kennedy, contains a mixture of naturalist short stories, symbolist prose poems, unsettling decadent vignettes, and expressionistic fairy tales from a half-forgotten master of Yiddish letters.

“Nomberg never wrote a sentence that didn’t contain the seeds of an idea.” — Froyim Kaganovski

About the Author
Hersh Dovid Nomberg (1876–1927)  was born in Mszczonow (Yiddish: Ashminov) a market town about thirty miles from Warsaw. Orphaned at a young age, he was raised by his maternal grandfather in a devoutly religious milieu. He began publishing poems and short stories around 1900 in both Yiddish and Hebrew and was considered one of the most influential Yiddish writers of his generation. Nomberg died at the age of 51, having suffered from chronic lung problems for most of his life.

About the Translator Daniel Kennedy is a translator and editor based in France. His first book-length translation, Zalman Shneour’s A Death: Notes of a Suicide, was published by Wakefield Press in 2019.

Paperback, 168 pages
Release date, September 6, 2022
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-101-9
Price: US$16.50

From the same author: A Cheerful Soul and Other Stories (Snuggly Books, 2021)