Hanan Ayalti (pen name of Khonen Klenbort, 1910-92) published many works in Yiddish and Hebrew, including Boom and Chains, originally published in Yiddish in 1936. Other works translated to English include No Escape from Brooklyn (1966) and Yiddish Proverbs (1963). He was born in a small town in the Russian Empire (now Belarus) and immigrated to Palestine in 1929. After four years, he fled to Paris due to his activism and published this novel in Yiddish a few years later. He came to the United States in 1946. Adi Mahalel teaches Yiddish studies and modern Jewish culture at the University of Maryland, College Park, and at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. He is the author of The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism. His work focuses on modern Jewish literature and film with an emphasis on comparative approaches across linguistic and cultural-political contexts.