The Peasants

One of Poland's most significant twentieth-century epics, by the 1924 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature A Penguin Classic In the village of Lipce, scandal, romance and drama crackle in every hearth. Boryna, a widower and the village's wealthiest farmer, has taken the young and beautiful Jagusia as his bride – but she only has eyes for his impetuous son Antek. Over the course of four seasons – Autumn to Summer – the tangled skein of their story unravels, watched eagerly by the other peasants: the gossip Jagustynka, pious Roch, hot-blooded Mateusz, gentle Witek ... Richly lyrical and thrillingly realist, at turns comic, tragic and reflective, Wladyslaw Reymont's magnum opus is a love song to a lasting dream of rural Poland, and to the eternal, timeless matters of the heart.