Semyon Yushkevich

Born in Odessa, Semyon Yushkevich (Iushkevich) was a prolific and popular author and playwright of Jewish literature in the Russian language. Writing in a neorealist style, Yushkevich was known for his stark and gritty and often controversial depictions of Jewish urban life, poverty, violence, and sexuality. Widely published in a range of journals and in book form, Yushkevich is credited with bringing the Jewish Question into the mainstream of Russian literature as well as beginning a new era of Jewish literature in Russian, and was invited early on in his literary career to join the prestigious Moscow-based group known as Sreda (Wednesday). After the Bolshevik Revolution, he briefly immigrated to the United States in 1921, where a number of his plays were translated into Yiddish and staged to popular acclaim. He eventually settled in Paris.