Jacob resembles Ben Dosa in Singer's King of the Fields (1988; see separate entry); both men are Jews living in a gentile and anti-Semitic culture but who are relentlessly pursued by women. Jacob and Ben Dosa fight temptation by considering the possibility that their wives and children may still be alive—if they survived a pogrom; both men are slaves who observe their Jewish beliefs faithfully, abstaining from sex because of their marriage but mostly because their love interests are not Jews. Both women (Wanda and Kosoka) willingly embrace the Jewish faith in order to pursue the men they love, even though many other villagers desire them and envy the Jewish men for having acquired the women's love. In both novels, Singer presents gentile females who aggressively pursue modest men; these novels contain a reversal of gender roles in regard to the sensuality and romantic relationships...