The Books Of Jacob A Novel Olga Tokarczuk Jennifer Croft Translation by Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft (translation) 9781910695593, 1910695599, B09HBTQCKG instant download after payment.

Finalist for the 2022 Kirkus Prize For Fiction

Olga Tokarczuk's portrayal of Enlightenment Europe on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty & longing for transcendence. 

The Nobel Prize–winner’s richest, most sweeping & most ambitious novel yet follows the comet-like rise & fall of a mysterious, messianic religious leader as he blazes his way across 18th-century Europe.

As new ideas - & a new unrest - begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a spell that attracts a fervent following. He reinvents himself, again & again, converts to Islam & then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah & wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish & Christian alike, with scandalous rumours of his sect's secret rituals & the spread of his iconoclastic beliefs.

"As daunting as it sounds, The Books of Jacob is miraculously entertaining & consistently fascinating. Despite his best efforts, Frank never mastered alchemy, but Tokarczuk certainly has. Her light irony, delightfully conveyed by Croft’s translation, infuses many of the sections … The quality that makes The Books of Jacob so striking is its remarkable form… This is a story that grows simultaneously more detailed & more mysterious … Haunting & irresistible.” — Ron Charles, Washington Post

The story of Frank - a real historical figure, a divisive yet charismatic man - is the perfect canvas for the genius & 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 & longing