It was originally published between January and September 1933 in installments in the Yiddish literary magazine Globus in Poland and in 1935 it was printed as a book.

[1] The novel describes a Jewish life in a Polish village of Goray after the massacres of the Cossack riots during the Khmelnitsky Uprising of 1648, which was influenced by the teachings of the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi in desperate hopes for messiah and redemption.

Since the Sabbatean's movement waned, a true believer in Torah came and exorcised the dybbuk.

[2] Meyer Levin wrote that the novel is "folk material transmuted into literature" and praised the English translation.

[3] Dar Williams' song "And a God Descended" (from The Green World album) uses imagery from the story to contemplate faith gone awry.