Fields of Asphodel is a 2007 novel by the American writer Tito Perdue. It picks up the story of Leland "Lee" Pefley where Perdue's first novel, Lee, left off.
Publication history The novel was first published in 2007 by the Overlook Press simultaneously with the reissue of Perdue's first novel, Lee.Antoine Wilson, "The Misanthrope," Los Angeles Times (15 July 2007). A new edition was published by Standard American in 2023.Google Books (accessed 21 May 2025).
Reception Publishers Weekly praises the book's "funny scenes and arresting lines."Publishers Weekly, 14 May 2007. In the Los Angeles Times, Antoine Wilson praises its "utterly charming and brilliantly comic penultimate scene" but also complains of "tone-deaf caricature" in passages where "satirical elements take center stage."
Both Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly compare the novel to those of Samuel Beckett; but the latter finds that it lacks Beckett's "lyricism."Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2007.
In the Quarterly Review, Derek Turner judges it "without a doubt the strangest" of Perdue's books yet published.Derek Turner, "Meet Lee Pefley – Sociopath (and Sage)," Quarterly Review (Spring 2008). Don Noble notes its "highly literate, idiosyncratic diction," while Turner finds it "difficult to know how to do justice to a book that combines ... courtly archaisms with crude street slang ... philosophical points ... with haemorrhoid-related humour."Don Noble, "Fields of Asphodel," apr.org (22 December 2008).Don Noble, "Pefley Visits the Underworld," Tuscaloosa News (28 December 2008).
Series The main character, Lee Pefley, and his forebears appear in many of Perdue's novels.Jim Knipfel, "Tito Perdue: America's Lost Literary Genius," New York Press (June 2001).
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