The subtle focus on this transition resonates with Tokarczuk’s earlier books, only a few of which have been translated into English. author scores with her own story tooĪfter translating a Nobel Prize winner’s work, Jennifer Croft tells her own story in ‘Homesick.’ Ultimately, he went to Istanbul and converted to Islam, the most transgressive thing a Jew could do.īooks After translating a Nobel Prize winner’s work, L.A. Out of this ferment arose millenarian fever and the Rabbi Sabbatai Tzvi, who claimed to be the Messiah and violated the Torah commandments.

But with the widespread popularity of the “Zohar” surged a strong undercurrent of Kabbalists, linguistic alchemists who penetrated the esoteric meaning of scripture to gain mystical wisdom. At the time, Jewish thought was dominated by Talmudists, orthodox scholars of rabbinic law. Tokarczuk ingeniously tells the story from the all-knowing perspective of Yente’s spirit. The story begins in 1752 in Podolia (then in Poland, now in Ukraine), when Frank’s grandmother Yente swallows a written spell meant to delay her demise, suspending her between life and death. With its disorienting reverse page order and dozens of maps, illustrations and documents, “The Books of Jacob” offers a reading experience that is literally incomparable. At nearly 1,000 pages, covering 50 years and as many characters, it’s a historical epic comparable to “ War and Peace,” though not nearly as straightforward. Originally published in Polish in 2014 and now translated into English by Jennifer Croft, the novel is a product of immense research and brilliant imagination. Approaching with curiosity rather than condemnation, Polish author Olga Tokarczuk made Frank and his followers the subject of her 12th work of fiction, the gargantuan novel “ The Books of Jacob,” which convinced the Swedish Academy to award her the 2018 Nobel Prize in literature. The false 18th century Messiah Jacob Frank “will always be remembered as one of the most frightening phenomena in the whole of Jewish history,” as Gershom Scholem put it. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.

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