A NEW YORKER "ESSENTIAL READ"
"Just as awe-inspiring as the Nobel judges claimed." - The Washington
Post
"Olga Tokarczuk is one of our greatest living fiction writers. . .
This could well be a decade-defining book akin to Bolaño's 2666." -AV
Club
"Sophisticated and ribald and brimming with folk wit. . . The comedy
in this novel blends, as it does in life, with genuine tragedy." -Dwight
Garner, The New York Times
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL, TIME, THE NEW YORKER, AND NPR
The Nobel Prize-winner's richest, most sweeping and ambitious novel yet
follows the comet-like rise and fall of a mysterious, messianic
religious leader as he blazes his way across eighteenth-century Europe.
In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas--and a new unrest--begin to
sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a
village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his
persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank
casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent
following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and
Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents
himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is
pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on
the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous
rumors of his sect's secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly
iconoclastic beliefs. The story of Frank--a real historical figure
around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day--is the perfect
canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. Narrated
through the perspectives of his contemporaries--those who revere him,
those who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who
sees him for what he is--The Books of Jacob captures a world on the
cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for
transcendence.
In a nod to books written in Hebrew, The Books of Jacob is paginated
in reverse, beginning on p. 955 and ending on p. 1 - but read
traditionally, front cover to back.
