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.

It begins in 1752 in Rohatyn and ends in Holocaust-era Korolówka. The story of Frank-a real historical figure, a divisive yet charismatic man-is the perfect canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. The Books of Jacob is a 912-page novel divided into seven books. London London Review Bookshop Pages of Hackney Foyles Bristol Storysmith’s U.K. He reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam, then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic, revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumours of his sect’s secret rituals and the spread of his iconoclastic beliefs. OctoTHE BOOKS OF JACOB by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft Bookshops accepting pre-orders for The Books of Jacob. The Books of Jacob by the Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk is an epic chronicle of the life and times of Frank and his followers. In The Books of Jacob, her masterpiece, 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Olga Tokarczuk writes the story of Frank through the perspectives of his contemporaries, capturing Enlightenment Europe on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence. Visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a spell that attracts a fervent following. In The Books of Jacob, Tokarczuk traverses the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in. The Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk’s richest and most ambitious novel yet follows the comet-like rise and fall of a messianic religious leader as he blazes his way across eighteenth-century Europe.Īs new ideas-and a new unrest-begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland.

The books of jacob fitzcarraldo