The King of the Fields

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

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.

Genres: Fiction, Poland, Novels, Polish Literature, American, Historical Fiction, Literature

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Isaac Bashevis Singer was a Polish American author of Jewish descent, noted for his short stories. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978.
His memoir, "A Day Of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw", won the U.S. National Book Award in Children's Literature in 1970, while his collection "A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories" won the U.S. National Book Award in Fiction in 1974.

Reviews

[Alexandra Phillips · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars because I was not very engaged so story was hard to follow. Very unique story but was interesting when I was focused. Not sure who the target audit is or how I acquired this book.

Two semi dud reads in a row in a bit of a reading slump so hope my next book gets me back.

[Alex Wb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this. I loved the simple poetry of the setting, the characters, the deceptively simple story and language. This book is not written to be read literally - it is not about the formation of the Polish nation or culture. It borrows the Polish landscape as well as people and cultures out of their time in history and recompiles them to illustrate and investigate something about the nature of human life. I was left with the ultimate inadequacy of religion and philosophy to satisfy either the spirit or the intellect.

The story begins in a beautiful, forested mountain setting where a pagan, hunter-gatherer society is successful and satisfied, albeit brutal. They are enslaved by horticulturalists with whom they eventually merge and are exposed to new cultures and society, organised religion and education. The naivety and rawness of the perspective of a natively intelligent hunter-gatherer is used to focus comparison of the philosophies on offer, so to speak - Judaism, Christianity and paganism. Ultimately they are all wanting and there are no satisfactory answers to the man's questions and he is despairing.

Is it an out-of-Eden metaphor? Hell is an intellect that questions.

Three male protagonists represent Judaism, Christianity and paganism and the three female protagonists seem to represent the options open to women - women do not have the option of full, independent character-hood and thought, they are defined by their positioning of themselves with respect to men. Men make them so, women are chattels and slaves, but the women are also complicit and do not realise there is power or autonomy to be had until external disruptions threaten the ongoing survival of the men they are loyal to. Even then they do not fully bloom, but only discover a raw, brutal potential in themselves that they never come to understand or harness.

Some female characters from the Old Testament are mentioned and I wonder if Kora, Yagonda and the slave woman are reincarnations of archetypes found there, but I can't say. Are they our passion, animalism, instinct and emotion that combine with our culture and intellect to make whole human beings? If so, then together the six primary characters are a jumble of the philosophies or takes on life that are on offer to humankind that attempt, and fail, to reconcile nature, spirituality and society.

[Elise · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s work for many years, and The King of The Fields did not disappoint. It is the fictional reimagining of a time when the Lesniks of Poland believed in witches, demons, and spirits, and they hunted for their food. Enter another tribe, the Woyaks, who rape and pillage before introducing agriculture into the world of the Lesniks. If you are triggered by rape, murder, violence, and bloodshed, don’t read this book. What I enjoyed about this novel is Singer’s ability to weave a compelling tale with a rich sense of setting that also manages to unveil the hypocrisy in the hearts of all men, regardless of whether they hunt, sow and reap, or practice the ancient religions, Judaism, or Christianity. I was particularly taken aback when the red king, Krol Rudy, is disappointed to learn that his new Lesnik wife, Laska, is not a virgin, the reason being that she was raped the night his own soldiers invaded her village. There are several moments like this that are hard to read but that reveal ugly truths at the heart of human nature. The beauty here is in the ancient setting and in the magic throughout. The King of the Fields is classic Singer but complex and impossible to categorize. Usually the best ones are.

[Tarmo Syvapuro · Rating 2 out of 5]

Romaani sijoittuu kaukaiseen Puolan historiaan ja on sangen mitäänsanomaton. On viljelijöitä ja on metsästäjiä, eletään jonkin sortin teltoissa ja luolissa, pukeudutaan eläinten nahkoihin, soditaan, ryöstetään, raiskataan, tapetaan, nähdään nälkää...ei tässä nyt oikein ollut mitään. Kevyt. En ymmärrä miksi on julkaistu kun kirjailijalla on aivan huippu hyviäkin teoksia. Tämä jättää Singeristä sangen valjun kuvan. Samaten Keltainen kirjasto voisi hieman miettiä mitä sisällyttää ohjelmaansa.

[Jamey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another perfect novel by Singer.

[Jaap · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een metafoor over het begin van de ontwikkeling van Polen tot een natie. Rauw en uiterst gewelddadig.

Gekocht bij de kringloop omdat ik nog nooit iets van Singer gelezen had en nou ja, hij heeft wél ooit de nobelprijs gekregen voor literatuur.

[Lorenzo Berardi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review will be a hard one to write for two reasons. First of all, I'm a great fan of Isaac Bashevis Singer to the point I own some of his books in both Italian and English translation. Secondly, I'm not prudish, puritan, Victorian or whatsoever, but still it hurts me to find plenty of gratuitous, nasty and badly written sex in a novel where it's not supposed to be the core of the story.

Alas, as much as I like I.B Singer, I cannot be that biased to give this late novel of his more than a weak pass mark.
True, Singer wrote 'The King of the Fields' when he was already 84 year old which is remarkable, but was writing this novel necessary? I'd daresay not.

Let's start by saying that even though Singer spent 56 years in the US, he kept writing books in Yiddish explaining his choice by stating that English couldn't compete with the multilayered richness of his native language. Fair enough, but another reason why the Nobel Prize winning author didn't switch to English is that he was aware that he didn't master that language very well. That's why all the major works by Singer aren't translated into English by himself, but by close friends and relatives of his with the author's supervision. I've always found Singer's choice to stick to the Yiddish language in writing and to leave the English translations to people with a better knowledge of the subtleties of that language quite honest and fitting to a man who kept a modesty and a sobriety unknown to other Nobel laureates.
However, as far as I remember, this is the only novel by I.B. Singer that he himself translated from its original Yiddish to English and unfortunately it shows. The language you'll find in this novel is miles away from the sophisticated and engaging narrative of the best works by his author.

The chief problem with 'The King of the Fields' is that it reads like a young adult novel in terms of writing style and that didn't work for me. I mean, there are plenty of dull dialogues and let-down descriptions. And yet, unlike a historical novel for young adults, history is surprisingly blurry here so much that it's never clear what's the period Singer is writing about.
On the one hand, we have uncouth heathen hunters living in caves like Cro-Magnon men, on the other hand there is a description of an unnamed town ('Miasto' means town in Polish) which is portrayed like it might have looked like in the 14th-15th century. We have an anachronistic Jewish character estabilishing a sort of cheder school teaching how to read to folks living in a hamlet where people walk barefoot and don't have a clue on how to farm the fields. We have Polish 'kings' looking and behaving like tribal chiefs and German merchants bartering weapons for furs while peasant townfolks buy meat by using groszen coins. Mmmh, all this sounds rather messy. Doesn't it?

What's worse, Singer enjoyed peppering these pages with some of the most disgusting sex scenes I've ever read. I mean something that would make even accomplished mysoginists such as Philip Roth or Michel Houellebecq blush.
I understand, I do understand that I.B. Singer wanted to take the reader into those obscure times where shattered tribes of pagan hunters ruled over nowadays Poland so that you couldn't expect fair treatment to women as well as equal opportunities. Nevertheless, there are so many rapes here and so many women falling in love with their rapists calling them 'my god' that I guess how Singer's point on sexual savagery is more than accomplished after the first 50 pages.

Together with rapes, incest, threesomes, pregnant 13 year old girls, choreographic coitus interruptus techniques and cheeky homosexuality (in pre-medieval Poland!), I couldn't bear some of the hyper-sexualized characters. Let's take the awful and cheesy submissive statements of one of the main characters here - Kora - who is countlessly called a miserable whore and a harlot such as:
'I want to wash your feet and drink the water after ward' (sic!) or
'I enjoyed other men as long as I could go from them to you' or the following dialogue:
'He spat at you and you kissed him?'
'Yes'
'It gave you pleasure?'
'Great pleasure'.
Marquis de Sade in pre-medieval Poland? But of course!

I don't know what old Isaac Bashevis was thinking about when he wrote this, but he certainly was into a perverted satyrish period of his long life.
There are some redeeming and even interesting moments in 'The King of the Fields', but I'm afraid they cannot balance all the needless and overexposed sexual frenzy you get all over the place.
I appreciate that a very old Isaac Bashevis Singer wished to detach himself from his usual milieu writing a story which probably meant to celebrate - in its own way - the birth of the Polish nation, but I cannot deny that this is the worst book by Singer I've ever read.

[Jacob Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one requires a lot of pondering and reflection and I was unwilling to give

[Dhanaraj Rajan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A racy entertainer.

It was purely an accidental read. I had recently gone to Poland and as I am a curious reader I searched for the Polish authors. Among many other names Isaac Bashevis Singer appealed me immediately. And the English book store that I normally frequent in Rome had a book by him in stock. Although, this was a least known book of Singer the blurb at the back cover said that it was a story that spoke of the formation of Poland as one nation (from the nomadic hunter gatherer society to a settled agricultural society). In other words, this is the summery about the process of the transformation that took place from pre-historic Poland to the beginning of the historic Poland. But then it was narrated in a story form. And the specialty is the story. It is narrated in the manner of an elder of the family telling the family history to the eagerly waiting great great grand children. It resembles a folk tale and has all the elements to enchant the reader (the folk beliefs about the gods that were present, cultural practices regarding the marriage/sex, the encounter with Christianity and Judaism, etc...). Also it speaks of interesting and intricate human characteristics (For instance, the characters of Kora, Yagoda, Kosaka, Laska, and Cybula). In short, as a good literature it has everything a reader longs for. And to know that there are other well known works by the same author is a pleasant news for the reader.

[Honza Prchal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Years ago, I read this. It remains my favourite work by any Nobel prize winner, and I even count Karel Capek, who would have won save for Adolf's objection to him.
I toyed with the idea of learning enough Yiddish to read it in the original, as some of my friends did.
Naturally, this is one of Singer's works that Wikipedia doesn't hyperlink in the entry on Singer.
It's remarkably sympathetic to Jews, Romans, and Slavic proto-peasants being preached to by the modern world of the day.

[Marji Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite. It's a pretty bloody and brutal (but probably accurate) look at early life in the pre- Roman Poland. You could say that civilization had not yet arrived in the area. (Later progroms suggest that it never did, but that's beside the point) Lots of betrayal, suspicion, espionage, brutality as rival tribes battle to establish dominance and set their leader as king.

[Russ]

I cannot figure out how this beautiful and frightening little story about early Medieval Poland flies so far under the radar. Everyone go out and read it right now! RIGHT NOW!

[Joni · Rating 2 out of 5]

A story of the early beginnings of the Polish homeland told with grace and a highly literate style.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, tha final novel published during Singer's long life. I'd never heard of it. Unlike his other works, he turns to the early history of Poland. The Lesniks still live off the land by hunting and gathering, and the Polish warriors subdue these people, forcing them to plow, plant, and sow for their new owners. Some rebel and flee into the mountains, some capitulate, but the imbalances of few young men left, lots of women, and scarce resources after the invasion mean hard times and endless strife. Cybela becomes the leader of the uneasy confederation, but power plays, fights over women, and the entrance of first a gentle Jewish shoemaker, Ben Dosa, and a Gentile, a Catholic missionary, create conflicts as the villagers of the fresh settlement find their old gods denigrated and denied.

Singer creates believable characters. One reviewer criticized this account, as he thought paganism and preliterate equalled prehistoric times. Yet not until 966 was this region evangelized by any Christians!

The narrative is filled with couplings, fights, debates, ambushes, and struggles of both the flesh and the spirit. We see how civilization spreads technology, literacy, commerce, and greed rapidly among a clan within a few years, and the pressures exerted to bow down to new gods and imperious warlords.

Singer evokes the dirty, impoverished, brutal settings well. This feels real, lacking florid language or archaic mindsets. Instead, we see people grappling with bold concepts about the forces they strain to comprehend in both their traditions and the new perspectives of Judaism and Christianity, played out as these conquered men and women, slave and serf, must surrender their customs or risk sudden annihilation. While this tale ends suddenly (one wonders if it being Singer's last long work, this had a role in the composition). Regardless, it's a thoughtful, and lively, dramatization of a pivotal moment.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written when he was 84, the premise is that humans have always been blood-thirsty savages but can be redeemed by converting to Judaism? That sounds absurd but the one Jewish character, Ben Dosa, is portrayed as righteous and ethical, a teacher and craftsman, surrounded by savages and Christians; it is however, more of a caricature that a credible character. The character would be credible, as a zealot, if the author didn't knock himself out trying to create a contrast with the other characters, by showing what animals they are, and by failing to cast doubt over the character's zealotry. Instead, Singer creates this Jewish paragon, the pinnacle of Godliness and the salvation of humanity, if only everyone would convert. This is what all fundamentalists preach. It's tragic really.

This character contradicts all of the doubt and humor that is inherent in Singer's previous work: doubts about religion and God, and humor concerning the human predicament. This doubt and humor is not only Singer's but part of the wider Jewish artistic cultural tradition, as it is part of any culture's artistic tradition. People don't need art to be taught religion, that's for sure. Art may illustrate certain religious stories or impulses but it isn't there to teach dogma or to proselytize. This is truly a humorless and bleak novel. A deathbed conversion? An old man hedging his bets? A retreat? A trap? Bitterness? Anger? Rage? Confusion? You cannot banish doubt with conviction. You cannot banish doubt.

Things they do look awful cold.
Hope I die before I get old.

[Moses Goren · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the worst Singer novel I’ve ever read, often ugly and repetitive and meandering. It might also be the most fascinating bad novel I’ve ever read. Singer imagines a formative period in Polish history in which agriculture, Judaism, and Christianity all arrive at around the same time. Agriculture is bloodily imposed by brutal drunkard Poles on a tribe of hunter-gatherers. A Jewish slave finds himself captive among pagan, human-sacrificing, daughter-raping savages, trying to keep himself safe and hold on to his dignity. Just when things seem to be working out, the first Christian missionary arrives and fucks everything up. The whole thing reads as an angry Polish Jewish revenge fantasy. The message is that Jews brought civilization to Poland, that they shaped its emergence as a true nation, that they suffered the Poles’ violent impulses for hundreds of years. So much rape in this novel. So much incest. Pagan speculations about the God of death not by the faithful Jew, interestingly, but by the pagan chieftain. Did Singer see himself as a pagan chieftain? And of course some stuff about vegetarianism. Agriculture rapes mother earth, forces her unnaturally to give birth. But what right do we have to hunt animals? This is what Singer imagines he would think about while lying in bed with his two wives who are mother and daughter.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. I chanced upon while moving from an apartment where I had lived for twenty-one years to a house I had just bought. I had been holding onto in four different apartments. Some writing on the early pages indicated that I had started it once.

And unlike other books I discovered during this move, when I started this one, I held onto the book. Other that I began I quickly discarded, giving them away. They didn't pull me in. This one did. In some ways, the pull lasted. I like the broad idea of the story--how a Polish community navigates the change from being a tribe of hunter-gatherers to settling down into a town of farmers.

But the writing was often stale. Apparently Singer does his own translation from the Yiddish. And this felt very much like a first draft--as if his editors didn't have the heart to tell the great writer that this work needed more work.

All this said, the elements for a great story are in place. It just needs some more shaping.

Finally, I could actually see how a filmmaker or TV producer could turn this into a story for the big screen or the little. Indeed, it could be the basis for a series showing this transition. In the end though, this book is more an anthropological essay in novel form than a novel itself.

[Ari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Neither good nor bad.
Yes, Singer is a Nobel price winner but it doesn't necessarily mean all his novels are masterpieces. In my opinion this was not.

If I were Polish I might have a different opinion as I don't think this was just a story about a small village in transit from hunter-gatherers to agriculture, old gods and superstitions being replaced by christianity, villages changing into towns etc.
I gather this was the analogy of the whole Poland's development during Middle-Ages. Or perhaps I just give this too much credit for depth and diversity.

The story itself was't specially interesting. "Normal" primitive violence, killings, murders and rape.
Described very casually as if was the way of everyday life. Maybe it was - when the law of the strongest was more or less the only law. Fortunately the violence wasn't too vividly portrayed.

As Singer is jewish there was naturally also the jewish aspect present, in form of an educated and intelligent slave who was an odd creature amongst the primordial Poles.

Luckily Singer writes quite well, otherwise this might have been almost boring.

Peltojen kuningas
Tammi 1990

[Berkles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pairs well with Lagerkvist's Barabbas. If the universe was created with a 0 to a 1 to a 2 to a 3 to infinity, it seems all the multiplicity returns to oneness again. The many thousand-godded heathen will turn back to the one God. The hunters and gatherers and berry-pickers will all worship wheat and farming and cities in the end. Singer speaks of a time when there were as many gods as villages, this is the story of the loss of that.

[Sean]

I... um... what!?

Sometimes fascinating in relation to what else I've read by Singer--so topical different and also resonant.

A wild, wide hodgepodge of ideas and notions.

And some bits Impressively Bad. Cybula and Yagoda and Kora... That was some weird authorial fixation of zero thematic import. Just no.

I dug Ben Dosa, however. I dug all the religion stuff.

[Christopher Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece by a master writer, this novel looks at the early years in the development of the Polish nation, a time of misery and bloodshed but also of transition - from hunter-gatherer to farmer, and from pagan gods to the Abrahamic god. Written in sparsely-decorated prose, Singer spins a fable out of history, his themes resonating and achieving the epic without requiring an epic page count.

[Sharon Zink · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story happens in prehistoric, or almost prehistoric, Poland. The people are living in caves or tents and dressing in animal skins. It mentions Judaism being introduced as well as Christianity, but the people are pagan.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a very odd and dark book... I'm not sure I can say I enjoyed reading it. If I dig deep enough, I think I could pull some philosophical meaning from this book, but it was not worth the unpleasantness of reading it.

[Monika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeśli ktoś sądzi, że zna twórczość I. Singera na wylot, a nie czytał "Opowieści o Królu Pól", to uroczyście oznajmiam, że się myli. To pozycja obowiązkowa, zupełnie inna od pozostałych książek tego autora. Zachęcam do lektury!

[Neel Prassanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

හරිම ලස්සනයි

[Rose Clubok · Rating 2 out of 5]

It seems to me that this book must have served as a kind of catharsis for Singer. It tells the story of a depraved ancient Polish society that only becomes more moral because of the influence of a Jewish shoe maker. Considering the time period Singer lived through, this myth of early Polish history makes more sense. Otherwise, it just seems strange and gruesome.

[Sarah Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very different book about the clash hetween hunter gatherers snd new farmers.
interesting to see how different regions evolved, even in a novel. Characters were all engaging.

[Abe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A simple prose narration that is both peculiar and provocative.

[Howard Olsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

a short, but intense, novel about the birth of the Polish nation. The book deals with a group of forest-dwelling hunters, who gradually become aware of a civilized world beyond their forest. These people are not cavemen-they have a pagen religion, a semi-permanent camp, and a system of ethics and morals. also, they can brew beer. However, they are barely cognizant of anything beyond the daily struggle for food and safety. Singer reveals his story slowly, but surely. for most of the book, it is unclear what era these people live in. First, their territory is invaded by a group of horsemen who force the, to cut down trees and grow wheat-something the hunters fear will lead to their enslavement. Next, they visit a town. Here, they meet a Jew who tells them of places with names like Rome, Canaan, and Babylon. Then, a young man rides into their camp and announces that he is their bishop and is their to tell them of the Good News. Ultimately, the book is brutal and bleak. The short moments of happiness-whether during a festival or in the arms of a loved one-are brief interludes between the deaths, hunger, and betrayals that mark the hunters' lives. Most (if not all) writers would have turned this story into a 900 page epic, but Singer manages to tell his story in less than 250. Its brevity adds to its power.

[Agnes Kelemen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is certainly not the best novel of my favorite author, Isaac Bashevis Singer. I am not even sure I would have taken it as seriously as I did-had it been written by someone else. Apart from a few characteristic returning problems Singer wrestled with throughout his oeuvre both in his fiction and in his autobiographical texts (why do animals and human beings have to suffer, why do people torture and murder each other and the animals, why there has to bw suffering in the world at all), this novel does not really show that it's a work by Singer. It is also an unfortunate choice to write a story about ancient Poles as a bunch of barbars with only one Abraham-like character who gets that sg is wrong with them and with the world (Cibula) and then add one Jewish character who is the embodiment of intelligence and civilization...... I wonder how the reception of this novel is in Poland.....
Singer wrote tons of so muchbetter novels and short stories than this one, but still this one also captured my imagination to some extent. I have just finished reading it, didn't "digest" it properly yet, I might slightly change my opinion and this review in a few days.