King of the Fields

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-modern-classics/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_Modern_Classics_Series_26_06">Choose 3 timeless classics for only £21 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Isaac Bashevis Singer, comes a fictional exploration of primitive history. Singer's novel portrays an era of superstition and violence in a country emerging from the darkness of savagery. Set in Poland in the dark ages, it describes the brutality, prejudice and subjugation that occur when hunter-gatherers and farmers struggle for supremacy over the land. Part parable of modern civilization, part fascinating historical novel, this modern myth is a philosophical examination of man and his beliefs, and reaffirms the author's reputation as a master of narrative invention.

Singer is a writer of far greater than ordinary power

Born in 1902, Isaac Bashevis Singer grew up among fellow Jewish families in Poland. In response to the growing Nazi threat in neighbouring Germany, Singer emigrated to America. Settling in New York, he worked as a journalist for a Yiddish-language newspaper, The Forward. Singer was insistent that even after the Second World War, a wide audience remained for Yiddish texts, and each of his novels were originally written in his native language. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. Since Singer's death on July 24 1991 his name has been used in honour for a street in Surfside, Florida, and for the full academic scholarship for undergraduate studies at the University of Miami.

A fictional exploration of primitive history, Singer's novel portrays an era of superstition and violence in a country emerging from the darkness of savagery. Set in Poland in the dark ages, it describes the brutality, prejudice and subjugation that occur when hunter-gatherers and farmers struggle for supremacy over the land. Part parable of modern civilization, part fascinating historical novel, this modern myth is a philosophical examination of man and his beliefs, and reaffirms the author's reputation as a master of narrative invention.

Love and Exile

From pre-First World War Warsaw to the New York of the 1930s, Nobel Prize-winner Isaac Bashevis Singer traces the early years of his life in this autobiographical trilogy. In A Little Boy in Search of God, he remembers his bookish boyhood as the son of an Orthodox rabbi, equally absorbed in science, philosophy and cabbala. Later, the pursuit of women came to obsess him almost as much as the pursuit of knowledge, and in A Young Man in Search of Love he chronicles the intricacies of his first love affairs. When he emigrated to the United States from Poland on the eve of the Second World War loneliness and depression overwhelmed him, and he relives those dark years in Lost in America. From beginning to end, Love and Exile sheds new light on Singer's own life and the fictional lives mirrored in it.

An astonishingly intimate record of a writer's inner wanderings

Isaac Bashevis Singer is exhilerating good company . . . His companions and loves, responding to a master's slightest nudge, bound out of his memory and onto the page

Born in 1902, Isaac Bashevis Singer grew up among fellow Jewish families in Poland. In response to the growing Nazi threat in neighbouring Germany, Singer emigrated to America. Settling in New York, he worked as a journalist for a Yiddish-language newspaper, The Forward. Singer was insistent that even after the Second World War, a wide audience remained for Yiddish texts, and each of his novels were originally written in his native language. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. Since Singer's death on July 24 1991 his name has been used in honour for a street in Surfside, Florida, and for the full academic scholarship for undergraduate studies at the University of Miami.

From pre-First World War Warsaw to the New York of the 1930s, Isaac Bashevis Singer traces the early years of his life in this autobiographical trilogy. In A Little Boy in Search of God, he remembers his bookish boyhood as the son of an Orthodox rabbi, equally absorbed in science, philosophy and cabbala. Later, the pursuit of women came to obsess him almost as much as the pursuit of knowledge, and in A Young Man in Search of Love he chronicles the intricacies of his first love affairs. When he emigrated to the United States from Poland on the eve of the Second World War loneliness and depression overwhelmed him, and he relives those dark years in Lost in America. From beginning to end, Love and Exile sheds new light on Singer's own life and the fictional lives mirrored in it.

Satan in Goray

A dark and mesmerising story, at once lyrical and terrifying

A gripping parable of reason versus revelation, hysteria in the face of apocalypse

Whatever religion his writing inhabits, it is blazing with life and actuality

Singer set scenes with such vividness that there is almost a smell to his books, the smell of poverty and guttering candles and decaying lives and decaying souls

His storytelling powers are so immense, so natural. He has more creative confidence than any living writer

A remarkably confident debut... Singer was a great writer who managed to make that small world take on universal significance

The richness of Singer's evocation and the ambiguity of his art set the novel apart from pure political satire

Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in 1904, in Poland, the son of a rabbi. Fleeing fascism in 1935, he emigrated to America, penniless and knowing little English. 'I think that the whole of human history is one big Holocaust,' he said in 1987, when asked why there was no direct mention of the Holocaust in his fiction. 'It is not only Jewish history. We can call human history the history of the human Holocaust'. Singer's fiction - novels such as The Family Moskat (1950) and The Magician of Lublin (1960), and story collections such as Gimpel the Fool (1957) and The Spinoza of Market Street (1961) - became admired internationally and he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1978. He died in 1998.

The pogrom that swept through Poland was interpreted as a sign of the Coming of the Lord. In the little town of Goray, laid waste by murder and famine, grief becomes joy as good news arrives of the second coming of the Messiah. Once the town’s pious rabbi is usurped, the townspeople are free to look forward to the End of Days, when they will wear golden jackets and dine on marzipan candy. But such perilously high hopes pave the way to hysteria, and a panic which could threaten the very existence of Goray.

The Family Moskat

A magnificent, terrifying, panoramic view of the decline of the Polish Jewry told by the Nobel Prize winning writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer

A masterpiece, a triumph of realism, precisely finished, exactly located, a miraculous marriage of accuracy and imagination

A loving and detailed portrait of Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust.

Guardian '1000 novels everyone must read'

Whatever region his writing inhabits, it is blazing with life and actuality

He makes most contemporary practitioners of the art of fiction look like singers with only one song

Isaac Bashevis Singer celebrates the dignity, mystery and unexpected joy of living with more art and fervour than any other writer-one of the very best storytellers

In the topsy-turvy years between the dawn of the twentieth century and the dark days of 1939, the Moskat family battled on. But like many Jewish families in Poland they can no longer turn a blind eye to the dwindling of their fortunes. In Warsaw, where saints mingle with swindlers, tough Zionists argue with mystic philosophers, and medieval rabbis rub shoulders with ultra-modern painters, life is inexorably changing. Secularism and war inch nearer and the family Moskat clings on.

The Magician of Lublin

A spellbinder as clever as Scheherazade; he arrests the reader at once, transports him to a far place and a far, improbable time and does not let him go until the end

Singer writes with a love and passion unequalled in contemporary fiction

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-91) was the author of many novels, stories, children's books, and a memoir. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978.

Yasha the magician - sword swallower, fire eater, acrobat and master of escape - is famed for his extraordinary Houdini-like skills. Half Jewish, half Gentile, a free thinker who slips easily between worlds, Yasha has an observant wife, a loyal assistant who travels with him and a woman in every town. Now, though, his exploits are catching up with him, and he is tempted to make one final escape - from his marriage, his homeland and the last tendrils of his father's religion. Set in Warsaw and the shtetls of the 1870s, Isaac Bashevis Singer's second novel is a haunting psychological portrait of a man's flight from love. 
 
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Enemies: A Love Story

One is forever suspended between laughter and tears by this rich and marvellous novel

Isaac Bashevis Singer is a rare pleasure ... a literary genius

Herman Broder, a refugee and Holocaust survivor, has three women in his life: Yadwiga, the loyal Polish peasant who hid him in a hayloft from the Nazis; Masha, his beautiful and neurotic true love; and Tamara, his first wife. Unsure of who he really is, what he wants and whether he can ever find peace, Herman navigates a crowded, Yiddish New York with a sense of paranoia and impending doom. Published in 1972, Enemies, A Love Story is an astonishing novel that blends humour and pathos to create a rich, humane portrayal of a man who cannot escape his past.

The Slave

A burningly radiant, intensely beautiful book. Singer is answering his age like a prophet

A peerless storyteller ... The Slave has the strength and authority of a timeless folktale

I cannot think of any book that catches so magically the pure intensity of the love of simple folk close to nature ... it's a beautiful story

The tale is tragic and warmhearted, full of mellow wisdom learned through suffering

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904--91) was the author of many novels, stories, children's books, and a memoir. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978.

Jacob, a Jewish slave held in a mountain village after escaping a massacre by Cossacks, will be killed if he tries to escape. The one saving grace is his love for his master's daughter, Wanda. They begin a secret affair, trying to avoid the cruelty of the other villagers, until one day Jacob's fortunes unexpectedly change. Now he must choose between his need to be with his people and his love for Wanda, who in turn will also discover the meaning of brutality. In The Slave, published in 1962, Isaac Bashevis Singer creates a dreamlike portrayal of isolation, rejection, love and the meaning of sacrifice.

Shosha

A fine story of life and love, innocence and evil ... Singer is a master storyteller

It is Warsaw in the 1930s. Aaron Greidinger is an aspiring young writer and the son of a rabbi, who struggles to be true to his art when he is faced with the chance of riches and a passport to America. But as the Nazis threaten to invade Poland, Aaron rediscovers Shosha, his childhood sweetheart - still living on Krochmalna Street, still strangely childlike - who has been waiting for him all these years. In the face of unimaginable horror, he chooses to stay... 
 
One of Isaac Bashevis Singer's most personal works, Shosha is an unforgettable novel about conflicted desires, lost lives and the redemption of one man.

Collected Stories

There are whole fistfuls of masterpieces in this one volume: a cornucopia of invention... The Collected Stories, when all is said and done, is an American Master's 'Book of Creation'.

Sparkling and triumphant, Isaac Bashevis Singer's stories are filled with wonder, gratitude, humour, irony and a wry eroticism that manages to exalt the pleasures of the flesh and the soul at the same time

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) was the author of many novels, stories, children's books, and a memoir. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978.

Isaac Bashevis Singer's work explores humanity in all of its guises. This collection of forty-seven short stories, selected by Singer himself from across the whole of his career, brings together the best of his writing. From the supernatural 'Taibele and Her Demon' to the poignant 'The Unseen', and from gentle humour in 'Gimpel the Fool' to tragedy with 'Yentl the Yeshiva Boy', these tales explore good and evil, passion and restraint, religious fervour and personal failings, within the traditional shtetls of pre-war Eastern Europe and post-war America.

In My Father's Court

'A world that no longer exists reaches us through one of the greatest literary artists of our time' Saturday Review

Issac Bashevis Singer (1904-91) was the author of many novels, stories, children's' books and memoirs. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978.

In this autobiographical work, specifically mentioned in Issac Bashevis Singer's Nobel Prize citation, Singer remembers his childhood in Warsaw, and especially the bet din, or Jewish Court, in his father's home on working-class Krochmalna Street. Advice seekers and petitioners making wills or seeking marriage settlements daily visit the rabbi in his study. In a world on the brink of modernity, Singer's gentle, learned father and his mother, equally pious but eminently practical, maintain a stubbornly traditional existence. In My Father's Court is a tribute to their efforts, and a fine evocation of life in early-twentieth century Warsaw.

Passions

In this masterly collection of stories, Isaac Bashevis Singer once again weaves bewitching fables from seemingly ordinary lives, showing us with subtlety and compassion humanity at its most mundane and mysterious. From modern apartments in Miami to nineteenth-century Polish villages, from bravery in wartime Warsaw to a different kind of courage in Lisbon, these tales span the world and the range of human life.

Old Love Stories

Makes most practitioners of the art of fiction look like singers with only one song

His storytelling powers are so immense, so natural... He has more creative confidence than any living writer

Isaac Bashevis Singer, in his short and humorous tales drawn from an old tradition, celebrates the dignity, mystery and unexpected joy of living with more art and fervor than any other writer...  one of the very best storytellers

This classic collection explores the varieties of wisdom gained with age and especially those that teach us how to love, as 'in love the young are just beginners and the art of loving matures with age and experience'. Tales of curious marriages and divorce mingle with psychic experiences and curses, acts of bravery and loneliness, love and hatred.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

The Penitent is the story of Joseph Shapiro, a disillusioned and aimless man who discovers a purpose to his life through the Jewish faith. Following his journey as he flees Nazi persecution in Poland in 1939, through wealth and a failed marriage in New York, and on to Israel, it charts his transformation from worldly confusion to spiritual certainty in orthodox Judaism. This powerful work is an examination of the nature of faith, the question of identity and the notion of how to lead a good life.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Praise for The Penitent

Singer is a writer of far greater than ordinary power

Singer is a master storyteller

Books by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter