The King of the Fields [Hardcover]

Isaac Bashevis Singer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1988

A fictional exploration of primitive history, Singer's novel portrays an age of superstition and violence in a country emerging from the darkness of savagery. Part parable of modern civilization, part fascinating historical novel, it reaffrims the author's reputation as a master storyteller.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Nobel laureate's disappointing interpretation of primitive history, translated from the Yiddish by the author, depicts the transition of Poland from a a hunter-gatherer society to an agricultural land whose new rulers "called themselves Poles because in their language pola meant field." This is not, as one might expect from Singer, a fanciful excursion into the realm of anthropological magic, charms and mysticism; rather, the earthbound characters spend much of their time raping, killing, acting out sexual perversions and tending to bodily functions. Women are paradoxically portrayed: when they are not being dragged off by their hair and addressing their men as deities, they are powerful, amazonlike specimens. The novel also suffers from an incongruous time frameat least one character calls her father "Tatele," a Yiddish diminutive, and a Jewish cobbler from post-Talmudic Babylon and a Christian bishop somehow find themselves among the prehistoric Poles. This encounter allows Cybula, one in a succession of kings of the fields, to engage in simplistic philosophizing about the origins of the universe, god, the vicious cycle of human cruelties and the likethat is, when he isn't busy sleeping with both his wife and her mother.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Long ago in the valley of the Vistula, the fierce but agrarian Poles brutally subjugate the Lesniks, a tribe of peace-loving hunters. Still, it is the Lesnik Cybula who eventually becomes "The King of the Fields." What a brave new world this is for Singer. There is a lone Jew, the itinerant shoemaker Ben Dosa, but Singer's lovable shlemiels, diabolical dybbuks, and New York Yiddish writers are nowhere to be found. Though Ben Dosa introduces the Hebrew God, and a blond man on a white horse spreads word of the new Christian God, in the end Cybula turns to the God of Death. With this, his ninth novel, 84-year-old Singer may have lost his innocence, but his vision and imagination are stronger than ever, and whether one reads the book as a parable of modern civilization and its discontents or as unadulterated fantasy, one is indelibly transfixed. Marcia G. Fuchs, Guilford Free Lib., Ct.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 244 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (October 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374181284
• ISBN-13: 978-0374181284
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,292,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good, but not the best from Singer, May 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The King of the Fields (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (Paperback)

This book deals with transition between the society of hunters and gatherers into society of peasants who worked the land. Changes are difficult, old beleifs die hard, and at the dawn of civilization there were many cruel things hapenning. I wish I could beleive that human beings have made significant progress, but unfortunately that probably isn't true.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars History?, August 10, 2004

By 

Tory "toryofmaine" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The King of the Fields (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (Paperback)

Over the years, I have read this novel a number of times. Contrary to many interpretations of this work, I did not view it as a historical novel, at least not the history that is represented on the surface. Instead, it is the history of Poland, Christianity and Judaism now, then and every time in between. Furthermore, it is a story of the human condition. One should not approach this novel in a literal sense. If you do, you are bound to be disappointed.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Singer's best, but a good way to view his creative drives, December 17, 2005

By 

Eric Maroney (Trumansburg, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The King of the Fields (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (Paperback)

This novel, a pre-history of Poland, is really a post-history of Isaac Singer. The concerns of his character and the characterization of this Poland is Singer's: a man who has a plural marriage (this time with a mother and daughter, sometimes it is two sisters, sometimes unrelated women), who grows disgusted with eating meat, and whose only faith is the belief in death. This is the end of The Family Moskat: "Death is the real Messiah, and that is the truth!" And here it is again, slightly less brilliant and stiring, but not without some drama and interest. Singer's Poland (like Singer's New York) is really about the difficulty of finding and maintaing belief in our world, a world that works to strip us of it with unbending will.