The King of the Fields
A Novel
Isaac Bashevis Singer
In an age of darkness Poland lives under the iron fist of Krol Rudy until their leader, returns with the knowledge of an outside civilized world.
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 reaffirms the author's reputation as a master storyteller.
“[Singer's] 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.” —Library Journal
“The strength of I. B. Singer's novel comes from the language, as it constantly undermines the flow of the narrative by infusing into the text — written in Yiddish and translated into English by the author — Polish words and phrases.” —The New York Times
About the Author
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991) was a Yiddish-language novelist and storyteller who chronicled Jewish life in Eastern Europe and America with humor, mysticism, and moral depth. Born in Poland to a rabbinic family, he emigrated to New York in 1935 and wrote for the Forverts (Jewish Daily Forward) for decades. His novels, memoirs, and short stories give voice to the shtetl, the Hasidic court, and the world lost to the Holocaust. His characters, whether rabbis, skeptics, dybbuks, or ordinary people wrestling with faith and desire, embody the tensions between tradition and modernity at the heart of Jewish experience.
Singer received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Literature for his “impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life.” He won two National Book Awards (1970 and 1974) and Newbery Honors in 1968 and 1969. His Jewish literary honors include the Louis Lamed Prize (1950 and 1956) and Israel’s S.Y. Agnon Gold Medal (1975). The Jewish Book Council selected his novel The Slave for its Harry and Ethel Daroff Memorial Fiction Award, the council’s top prize for English-language fiction of Jewish interest, in recognition of 1962 publications. A master of the short story, he is remembered for classics such as “Gimpel the Fool,” translated into English by Saul Bellow.