The Magician of Lublin

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Overview

Set in nineteenth-century Poland, this novel tells the story of Yasha - a sword swallower, fire eater, acrobat and master of escape - famous for Houdini-like tricks. A free thinker with an observant Jewish wife at home and a woman in every town, his exploits catch up with him and he is tempted to make one final escape - from his marriage, his homeland, and his father's religious heritage. But his plans unravel and he instead seeks to lock himself up in a place that even he won't be able to escape - and to spend the rest of his days doing penitence.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632921864
Publisher:	Goodreads Press
Publication date:	04/01/2021
Series:	Isaac Bashevis Singer: Classic Editions
Pages:	226
Sales rank:	465,920
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.52(d)

About the Author

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

Date of Birth:

July 14, 1904

Date of Death:

July 24, 1991

Place of Birth:

Radzymin, Poland

Place of Death:

Surfside, Florida

Education:

Attended Tachkemoni Rabbinical Seminary in Warsaw, Poland, 1920-27

Editorial Reviews

Though The Magician of Lublin has major philosophical underpinnings, Singer excels at moving the story along like a compulsively readable thriller. Blessed with the gift of creating worlds, his narratives invariably feel not like they've been written but as if they are happening in front of our eyes. Part of this gift is Singer's facility for vivid characters. Whether it be minor bystanders who appear for a moment or major players like the brazen blond pimp Herman, ‘a giant who knows himself invincible,' Singer never fails to conjure up people who get up off the page and walk around. Being a modern can be a sometime thing, but great writing engages and endures.” —Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Singer, far from being gentle and grandfatherly, was as shockingly modern a writer as Dostoevsky. He is a chronicler of spiritual disintegration, exploring the devastating effects of appetite and passion—even of thought itself—on souls unprotected by faith . . . The dark power of The Magician of Lublin is nowhere clearer than in its concluding message—that, for a modern man, to return to God may require a decision as violent and frightening as any crime.” —Adam Kirsch, Tablet

“Singer's minute particulars, at which he is a master, invariably are Eastern European Jewish. His eye for detail is manifest throughout The Magician of Lublin.” —Harold Bloom, The New York Review of Books

“[Singer] is 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.” —Jean Stafford, The New Republic

“A peerless storyteller, Singer restores the sheer enchantment with story, with outcome, with what-happens-next that has been denied most readers since their adolescence.” —David Boroff, Saturday Review

“Singer is a genius. He has total command of his imagined world.” —Irving Howe, The New Republic

From the Publisher