Раскаявшийся

by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Исаак Башевис Зингер

Герой романа "Раскаявшийся", Иосиф Шапиро, который пережил Холокост и сумел достичь благополучия, начинает испытывать отвращение к окружающей жизни со всеми ее соблазнами и ложью. Душа Иосифа становится ареной борьбы Бога и дьявола.

Genres: Fiction, Jewish, Literature, Judaism, Historical Fiction, Religion, Novels

188 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

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

[Benjamin baschinsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very profound novel of someone seeking his Religion in a changed world and the different interpretations of it.
I have read a few of Mr Singer’s works and I found this story very revealing .

[Mmars · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are errant rockets firing incongruent messages in my brain right now. I hated it! It was brilliant! What a diatribe! What did you expect from a book called "the Penitent" ? This was SO 1969 sexual revolution! It was believable! It was not, it was every man's fantasy! Oh, dear, me.

But thank goodness there's a quote on the back cover that validates my conflicted mind. This from author Susan Hill, 'A deeply disturbing book, which will make you think, question, argue, disagree by turns, but will not leave you either unchanged or unmoved and whose message will remain with you, perhaps forever afterwards.'

Well, I'm not sure about the forever afterwards part, but I can agree with the rest.

I was hooked by the preface's first two paragraphs.

"In 1969 I had my first opportunity to catch a glmpse of the Wailing Wall, about which I had heard so much. It looked somewhat different from the Wailing Wall carved on the wooden cover of my prayer book. That one showed cypresses, but I didn't see trees here. Jewish soldiers guarded the entrance way. It was daytime and a crowd of Jews of all kinds had gathered. There were Ashkenzic and Sephardic. Youths with earlocks hanging to their shoulders....Beggars held out hands for alms, some even haggling with their benefactors. The Almighty conducted business here on a twenty-four-hour basis.

I stood and looked at the Wall, and at the surrounding streets, which were inhabited by Arabs. The houses seemed to stand as if by a miracle, one looming over the next and leaning out and jostling for a better view of the stone wall that stood as a memento of the Holy Temple. The sun blazed with a dry heat and everything smelled of the desert, of ancient destruction and of Jewish eternity."

Okay. Let me digress. In 2012 I had the opportunity to visit the Wailing Wall, an experience I will never forget. There are soldiers everywhere near the entrance. The wall is split in two parts, one side for women, the other for men. There were many different kinds of Jews there, as well as a group of Japanese tourists, a choral group of African Americans from Harlem donning bright yellow outfits, and countless other world travelers and daily local "penitents." I remember no beggars. (In fact, though I saw poverty up close at a flea market in Tel Aviv, I did not come across any panhandlers.) There is no street, just a large area to mull about in and take photographs while waiting your turn to enter the enclosed wall area. I don't so much remember seeing houses, just the rooftops and walls of buildings as we left that area and continued our tour. One building with a barbed wire rooftop sectioning off the Arab quarter and one with a wall containing bullet holes. The sun did blaze with a dry heat. But to me, it held recent destruction and eternal diversity.

When I entered the Wailing Wall area I decided not to walk up to it, but to sit on a bench against the back wall to observe. Seated beside me was a 70ish woman, praying in English. I wasn't paying close attention to her prayers until I realized that she prayed for a woman she unable to visit. Historically this seemed logical to me; that she was separated in some way from a loved one. But then she said "every time I try to get close to her they try to shoot my eyes out with laser beams." It took some restraint to not yank my head around and say "Excuse me? Say what?" But, in the same instant, I could only sadly wonder what sort of traumas this woman may have suffered in her life.

Well, that's not what this book is about at all! At the wall, the narrator meets a man whose story takes up the rest of the book. Singer's storytelling is so convincing it's hard believe the viewpoints held within the man's tale do not mirror Singer's own philosophies. I almost skipped the author's note at the end of the book, but being a good little reader today, I read it. I am chastized. This is fiction. And sometimes fiction needs a disclaimer such as .....the opinions expressed in these pages are not necessarily those held by the author and should not be used against him...

But, I still have a rub. Sadly, it's dated. This book was written in the early 1970s. The time, lest anyone forget, of the sexual revolution. Free sex. Pickups, mistresses, open relationships, sex on airplanes. Whoa. Wait a minute. Meeting a young woman on an airplane and she comes on to you and you get a blanket and try to do it there? I dunno. So the narrator's life of adultery has ended and he boards a plane and this happens. Then he gets to Tel Aviv and the women are still falling all over him. He is a self-made rich man who survived WWII by roaming places like Russia. Now he's running away to become a penitent. That's the scenario.

Much of his story relays his struggles of argumentive thought. The Devil tries to lure him back to his evil sexual ways and his new-found religious self talks him out of it. He rants against the society he's escaping and by the end of the book, his complete transformation is revealed when he chances upon the woman he met of the plane and they discuss their now divurgent philosophies over tea.

It's not as shallow or cheesy as I make it sound. Singer is too good of a writer. He gets inside the man's mind. He made me want to scream and throw the book across the room. See? Brilliant.

[RYD · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really like Isaac Singer, which is what made this book so disappointing. His character here, Joseph Shapiro, is self-righteous, judgmental and preachy and lacks the humor and humanity that Singer usually displays.

The book is basically one long pontification. Here's one bitter passage, of many, many:

"Even in those days someone was being killed in New York every other day and the police never found the perpetrator. If he was found, the lawyers promptly bailed him out and the court later freed him for lack of evidence. If a witness did show up, he had to be kept in confinement to protect him from the criminals. In America, as in Sodom, the perpetrator went free and the witness rotted in jail. All this was done in the name of liberalism. The whole worldly justice system protects the criminal and leaves the actual or potential victim at his mercy. Everyone knows this, but try talking about it and you're called the worst names."

At one point almost 100 pages into the monologue, there's this piece of insight:

"I know what you will say: 'Tell the story, don't preach.'"

Indeed.

[John Giudice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never has there been a book that has expressed my sentiments so perfectly. At times I could not tell whether I was reading the thoughts of someone else or my own. I loved this book from beginning to end. It's perfect in every aspect. I am shocked that there are reviews less than five stars.

[Isabella Kolb · Rating 1 out of 5]

sexistisch, homophob und gegen ende sehr unreflektiert.

[Mewa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zamysł ciekawy, ale nie przekonała mnie ta historia.

[Billy O'Callaghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ostensibly, the revelation of one man's life, delivered in confessional style, charting Joseph Shapiro's rejection of all the successes, sins and comforts of the modern life for a spiritual purity that can only be found for him by reconnecting with his roots, and becoming a devoted student of the Talmud. A Polish-born survivor of Hitler and Stalin, he'd settled in the U.S., struck it rich in business, kept a wife and a mistress, indulged his every whim. But when it all falls apart he is overwhelmed by the shallowness of who and what he'd become, and fled to Israel.
I have long been an admirer of Isaac Bashevis Singer's short stories, so I came to The Penitent with high hopes. And while it was nothing at all like what I'd expected, I can't say it disappointed me. Because Singer writes beautifully, this is an eminently readable book, and while the plot itself is slight, the pacing kept me nicely on the hook. True, the preaching, especially towards the end, finally proves overwhelming, but I enjoyed the unfurling of a fanatic's nature, opinionated, bombastic, hypocritical and yet entirely human, especially when dealing with the inner demons, and I was pleased to find considerable subtlety beneath the surface whitewash.
Not knowing all that much about the author, I don't know if Joseph Shapiro is meant as a mouthpiece for Singer's own observances and beliefs. My impression is that he isn't, though he obviously represents a faction of the Jewish faithful. Singer's skill here, at least as I see it, is in painting a portrait of an extremist, and yet reflecting the truthful aspects in several of Shapiro's seemingly wildest arguments.
Finally, there's a short Author's Afterword that is meant, I think, to be taken as part of the novel, that cuts to the crux of the book, and the reason for its writing:
“The agonies and the disenchantment of Joseph Shapiro may to a degree stir a self evaluation in both believers and skeptics. The remedies that he recommends may not heal everybody's wounds, hut the nature of the sickness will, I hope, be recognized.”

[Leah Rubin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Whatever else he may be, modern man isn’t ever at a loss for words.” (99)

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this hard to put down. Loved his writing and found the story suspenseful as I wondered where Joseph Shapiro’s unrest and unhappiness with modern life would take him.

[Shmuli Cohen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps a better translation for the title of this book should have been “Confessions of a Baal Teshuva.” Or better still perhaps this book should never have been translated from the Yiddish at all. This is not IBS’s best work. It is not even close.
The novel concerns a young-ish post-war-Jewish-American-immigrant, Joseph Shapiro. His life is a curious circus of hedonism and vice. He cheats on his wife, visits prostitutes and deals in real estate - all which strangle him with a deep sense of loneliness. Ultimately, the emptiness drives him to traditional Judaism and the narrow streets of Mea-Shearim.
I expected a moral-inquiry into the human condition, a kind of Kafka-esque morphosis. Instead what I got was a homophobic misogynist who comes off way too preachy, self-righteous and judgmental. Shapiro regularly describes women in terms of their propensity to draw him into their sexual depravity. As if he lacks any sense of personal responsibility towards his own behaviour.
The story is low on the humour and humanity which we expect from IBS. His scathing attack on modernity is perhaps a mirror of Shapiro’s/Singer’s own sense of failure as a human being. Its attempt to persuade us to question materialism is too heavy on the polemic and intolerant to everything else. It is both a failed attempt at an Epictetian discourse and at exposing the edgy difficulties modern Jewish culture faces today.
The Penitent is light on plot and exposition, but grindingly heavy on exuberance and homily. Its English translation is literal and faithful; however it fails to communicate the emotion, freedom and beauty of Yiddish. Words like ‘Phylacteries’, ‘Penitent’, ‘God’s Divine Presence’ lack the positionality and the contextual fluency of their original form.
The Penitent is in essence a relentless and grating monologue. A tirade which is negative, intense, apprehensive and fascinated with lust yet repulsed by it. It is witless, lacks any twist or surprise and shrieks vengeance on the unsaved, the unsavoury and on itself.
The only redeeming quality is that it pokes us with that feint internal force which tells us to be honest, to do the right thing, to be pleasant and ordinary, kind and charitable and more than anything else to be more Jewish than Jew. For deep in our hearts we know that this will help protect us from becoming less narrow, lonely, frightened and self-centred people.
For all that its worth, Isaac Bashevis Singer is the quintessential anti-rebel. He risked all to treat plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions with reverence and conviction instead of irony and satire. His sincere grasp of neo-orthodoxy is clearly naïve. Maybe that’s the point. Unfortunately this book won’t be remembered for anything but its pithiness and lack of a good story.

[Bernadette Jansen op de Haar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impressive account of one man’s quest to find out who he wants to become and how to get there. Beautifully written, not a word too many. Absolute gem.

[Sabrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Singers Roman "Der Büsser" und sein Protagnonist Joseph Shapiro hat für mich auf jeden Fall einige positive, aber auch negative Aspekte. Meine Meinung über das Werk ist so gespalten, dass ich sie am besten in einer Pro- und Kontra Aufzählung darlege.

+ interessanter Werdensgang vom erfolgreichen Bauherrn in New York zu einem frommen Juden in Jerusalem
+ reflektierte Ansichten zu Vegetarismus, Suizid, Frömmigkeit
+ persönliche Glaubenskrise und Zweifel diskutiert und realistisch dargestellt
+ sehr flüssig zu lesender Schreibstil Singers
+ die deutsche Ausgabe (2020) besitzt ein Glossar mit Erklärungen zu jüdischen und jiddischen Begriffen, die in der Übersetzung beibehalten wurden; generell hat das Werk einen Lernfaktor über die jüdische Religion und Kultur
- unglaubliches Verallgemeinern alles "modernen" als gottlos, frevelhaft, sündhaft. Teilweise schwer sexistische und homophobe Äußerungen des Protagonisten
- positive Verklärung religiösen Fundamentalismus
- Verurteilung sämtlicher Lebensstile, die nicht den Idealen Shapiros entsprechen

Viele Werke Singers beschreiben das Fremdgehen, Affären und verschiedenste Aspekte des Liebens aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln. Wer auch mal die Sicht eines Büssers, jemandem, der diesen Lebensstil bereut und hinterher verurteilt, erleben möchte, ist mit diesem Werk gut bedient.

Triggerwarnungen, die das Buch haben sollte: religiöser Fundamentalismus, Sexismus, Homophobie, moralische Verurteilung von SexarbeiterInnen und nicht streng monogamen Beziehungen

[Boris Feldman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Prof. Harold Bloom wrote a brutal review of this short novel in 1983. http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/98/0...
I was skeptical of the review. I now acknowledge that Bloom was right. This work is like a comic-book version of Ecclesiastes. I am a deep follower of Singer. This is his worst work.

[Alejandro Sierra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Narración encantadora, difícil de apartarse de ella. Más que una novela parece un manifiesto moralista de un hombre cansado de las contradicciones y la inmoralidad del mundo moderno y vuelve al antiguo, más que por fé, por convicción, porque sus principios se reflejan más en la tradición judía ortodoxa que en la modernidad. Es un interesante punto de vista.

[Ania · Rating 4 out of 5]

actually thought this was really good.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

A cynical, bitter, sour novel frm Singer. I would recommend the collected stories as a more complete and more typical representation of the author's humor and story telling.

[Luisa Marzola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Letto diversi anni fa , e dato in prestito ad una persona che non me lo ha più restituito, questo libro mi è rimasto nel cuore , ed è uno dei pochi libri che desidero rileggere. Si potrebbero dire tante cose , ma quello che conta è il contenuto , attualissimo e pieno di verità, senza essere banale e scontato. Sono felice perché sembra sia il libro preferito dallo stesso autore, e già questo certifica la sua bellezza e profondità.

[Federico Benito · Rating 2 out of 5]

No me gustó el libro aunque se pueden rescatar algunos fragmentos.

[Yair · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've heard it said that in order for a comedy to be effective it must be smarter than its audience. With that in mind, I posit that sometimes a story needs be written by a hand smarter and more full of grace than the subject being discussed.

And this brings us to Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel "The Penitent". Though long familiar with Singer (and having greatly enjoyed his short story "Gimpel the Fool" way back in my community college days...wow, that long already? Time passes and she hurts...) this is his first novel I've read to completion. I'll be blunt: this novel, much like Saul Bellow's Selected Short Stories, is saved by the writer's afterword. That's not to say that Singer's considerable skill as a novelist and storyteller isn't on display in the pages proceeding the afterword, but they are unfortunately deluged and hidden, almost to drowning, by the words of the book's protagonist Joseph Shapiro.

Now, I hesitate to call Shapiro a 'bad' man. He in point of fact actually voices many of the concerns that I (and I imagine others) have regarding modern America, modern Israel, modern Judaism, modern everything. The licentiousness, the greed, the materialism, the artificiality; Joseph Shapiro attacks all these things with gusto and passion whilst bemoaning his own success at achieving this modern dream. But unfortunately he does so in quite possibly the worst way imaginable: with half-cocked vagaries and ambiguous but declarative claims based solely on his nostalgia for an 'older, better time' and the good feelings that are stirred in his heart and mind from said claims and vagaries (the yiddish word 'naches' fits here). Shapiro casts all of modernity as evil and nearly all of old religious Judaism as the palliative for his people's collective ills, the further from the contemporary, the better.

This, unfortunately, leads to some quite disturbing 'revelations' on behalf of Shapiro that, I can only imagine, Singer must have had a bit of a time reconciling in his own mind and heart. And Shapiro makes the classic mistake that many new 'converts' (a bit of a joke as Shapiro was a born Jew, and is in, over the course of the novel relaying his story of becoming a Baal Tshuvah ((a penitent and 'born again' Jew)) to Singer) make, namely, gross over-assumption and personalizing EVERYTHING. Because Shapiro sinned sexually all of modern man has sinned sexually. Because modern ideas and philosophies gave him no pleasure, solace, or enlightenment than, naturally, all the Enlightenment and every bit of non-Torah sanctioned literature and philosophy is now null and void. And so on and so forth. After the first five or so pages you know exactly where this story is going, it's kind of hard not to, and in a similar amount of page related time you'll begin to find Shapiro's ideas (along with his voice) obnoxious, ignorant, angry, and condescending (as well as more judgmental than any Old Testament God).

But despite all these negatives I would advise you, gentle reader, to please stick with this, admittedly slim, text until its conclusion. Like I said in the beginning of this review I believe that Singer was a lot smarter than his story's subject and knew just what to keep in and tell in his story. And this is all to the story's benefit. Maybe I was, initially, too close to the subject matter to see more, or most, of Singer's talent on display. But honestly, and maybe this comes with maturity as a couple years ago a book like this would have nauseated me, I enjoyed this book as a generalized depiction of one man's struggle for some kind of clarity and sense of morality in a world gone mad, if not completely amoral.

Shapiro isn't pleasant man or even that intelligent of a man to me as he seems willfully blind to his own hypocrisies (he shuns modernism, embraces ultra-orthodox Judaism but maintains his vegetarianism despite the contempt of his fellow orthodox Jews and THIS is 'an accepted rebellion'?) but despite this and even despite himself Shapiro does come upon a handful of ideas that sound like the beginning of true knowledge even, dare I say, true philosophy, like this honest gem: "But I was determined to live the way I wanted and the way I understood. If this meant that I had to alienate myself from all people, it would be no tragedy either. If one was strong, one could endure this as well." and his ideas about the necessity of Diaspora and Exile for the Jewish spirit are fascinating as well and more than worth a read.

In the end though this novel is Singer's not Shapiro's and for that I am, ironically, Biblically grateful. It's the author's ideas put forward in his afterword that really codify and even justify the proceedings, nowhere else more artfully and beautifully accomplished than with his passage: "Those who dedicate their lives to serving God have often dared to question His justice, and to rebel against His seeming neutrality in man's struggle between good and evil. I feel therefore that there is no basic difference between rebellion and prayer."

[Maria de Kruijf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wil je lezen wie de mens is, lees dan dit boek.

[Daniel Romero Vargas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Changing current happiness for a new kind of happiness on a new physical space? A nationalistic dogma sounds in the book, surpassed in quality by others of the author's books.

[Gregg Bell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I once went through a phase where I completely disengaged from technology. I had no internet. Sold my TV and vcr. Got rid of all radios. Even pulled the fuse on my car radio. I'd just felt like I was wasting my life via technology and wanted to live a real life. And that is of course an extreme position to take, but even today I find myself being drawn to such asceticism. As it turned out, I was longing for just such asceticism when I heard about Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Penitent.

I had always been a big Singer fan. The man writes with such wonderful honesty, and he lives in a world that at times I'd like to live in too. A world of intense spirituality. A world with powerful right and wrong delineations of morality. A world of substance, of deep meaning. But somehow I had missed hearing about The Penitent when it first came out. When I heard about it years later, I snapped it up.

It's a slight book. 164 lightly-spaced pages in hardcover. And the book is in Singer's eminently read-able voice, but despite having the raw material for a compelling story (A European Jew finds his way to America where he becomes wealthy and successful, and disillusioned with it all and heads back to Israel to live a more authentic, more spiritual life.), the book is only episodic. It's as if there is no contrast, no push and pull, as if it is only Singer, just barely hiding behind his protagonist, moralizing.

And if you're in need for some good moralizing I think Singer's is good moralizing indeed. But for a novel to work, even a moralizing novel, as a novel it must have the power of story working within it.

If you're a Singer fan, you'll enjoy this book. If you're not, well, I think there are elements of the book you will enjoy, but the book as a novel not so much.

And Singer's moralizing is strong, borderline rant. In today's sanitized 'anything goes but morality' world of ours many will excoriate Singer's opinions in this book. And while I of course don't agree with everything he says there is very much of what he says that resonates with me as being the truth.

I think of the glorification of organized crime in movies and TV shows. I think of a movie like "Pulp Fiction." I remember seeing it with a friend and his wife, and in a scene where one of the gunman accidentally shoots someone in a car (very realistic violence, blood splattering everywhere) they were laughing. I was appalled.

Now Singer:

"Only now as I speak to you do I realize how much suffering this art has caused me. In order to enjoy it, you must have the heart of a murderer. It is completely sadistic, mean and cruel. I often saw Celia and Liza laughing at scenes that should've evoked tears."

And:

"All worldly art is nothing but evil and degradation. Through the generations writers have glorified killing and debauchery and they have all kinds of names for it--romanticism, realism, naturalism, New Wave, and so on."

The Penitent was written over thirty years ago. Is the state of art any different today? Without descending into my own moralizing (too far anyway), is not debauchery and violence being glorified today? I don't even know what some of the genres are now. They're categorized by initials (euphemizing them, as do some of the full-word genres, like "erotica"). Some of the milder forms are S&M and snuff genres.

Singer wouldn't be popular with a lot of people nowadays. Nobody likes anybody telling them what's right or wrong. It's all about tolerance and freedom and rights. Well, Singer would disagree. You can read The Penitent and decide for yourself which side of the fence you're on.





Have a little spare time? I've free flash fiction (all stories under 1K) at my website greggbell.net

[Jose Antonio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Espléndido sermón en forma de novela autobiográfica. Se lee con mucho interés, por su estilo fluido y ágil.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed I. B. Singer's story Gimpel the Fool in high school and have intended to return to Singer ever since. I am glad that I did. Singer is a great storyteller with a distinct voice. The Penitent does flirt with sacrificing good storytelling for a critique of modern society. However, the social commentary is close to the heart of the book's main character, Joseph Shapiro, who is the narrator. Ultimately, the book is about the pilgrimage of the now "penitent" (baal teshuva, i.e. returned to orthodox Judaism from the spiritual exile of secularism) Joseph Shapiro. And it was a great pleasure to follow along with Joseph as he recounts his pilgrimage from an unholy worldliness to the service of a God who will not, Joseph trusts, victimize the humble faithful. To Joseph, modern, secular people are all victims of themselves, oppressed souls in exile who are slaves to various idols of their own hands.

It is well worth setting aside two hours in order to view 1960s New York, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and a trans-Atlantic flight through Joseph's (and Singer's) story. The story is a pleasure in itself, but also, one cannot look at life in the same way after seeing it through Joseph's perspective.

[Gina Rheault · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jews come in all flavors and backgrounds. For Joseph Shapiro, survivor, and then seeker of meaning, crisis becomes a complete embrace of a religious worldview and lifestyle. For me, this story is an interesting view from inside the Jewish tribe itself, of Jewish intra-tribal conflict and diversity, not only among diaspora American Jews but particularly within Israel, where those differences can be fierce. The useless Jews who pray vs the corrupted Jews who fail to pray, and everyone in between. I could see the same sort of conversion process that struck Joseph Shapiro happening with a secular Christian, or Muslim, which made this more than a "Jewish" book, The added Israel element, makes it a way to feel the ongoing political conflict that goes on in Israel and among Jews today.

[Aaron Wolfson · Rating 4 out of 5]

How can you live a life devoted to God? Do you have to disdain all the trappings of the modern world? Do you have to follow the rules of your chosen religion to the letter? Is faith something inborn or can it be developed?

Joseph Shapiro is searching for the answers to these questions. Fed up with the hedonism and duplicity of his life in New York, he leaves his wife and mistress and hops a plane to Tel Aviv. Will he discover penitence in the Holy Land?

This is an excellent examination of what it means to have faith, told from the Jewish perspective. Singer has lived this, and his words ring true.

[R/P · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never read anything by this author before. After only three pages I was hooked. This is the story of one man's plight as a displaced person following World War II; but it is also his confession and his tale of transformation. It is a small book that asks big questions, with the narrator's concerns about human nature at the center of them.

[Sara SR · Rating 1 out of 5]

At first I thought it would be a great book about the difficulties of being religious in the modern day, but I couldn't have been further from the truth. Stay away from it unless you want to feel disgusted by the fact that you held this book in your hands.

Needless to say I won't read any more Singer.

[Jason Hillenburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slim novella from this Nobel winner, it wrestles with the question of faith in the modern world, among other themes. Singer's protagonist espouses views that may provoke some to hurl the book across the room. Still, it succeeds because he's a credible character and Singer maintains a consistent voice throughout the work. Deftly and confidently written.

[Don Heiman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ballantine Books released Isaac Bashevis Singer’s paperback edition “The Penitent” in 1983. Isaac was born in Poland in 1904 and grew up in Warsaw. He received the Nobel Pride in Literature in 1978. Isaac is a renown Jewish novelist and survivor of two world wars. “The Penitent” is a novel about main character Joseph Shapiro’s journey to escape Nazis terrorism, acquire wealth in America, and overcome his lustful life style by embracing the religious tenants of Judaism. Joseph leaves America and goes to Israel where he seeks repentance for his philandering ways. In Jerusalem he marries Sarah Haim the love of his life. Joseph and Sarah’s Jewish faith, their mutual love, and their life in Jerusalem allow them to overcome the evils of war and social injustice. (P)