The Books of Jacob

Hardcover – NEW

The Nobel Prize-winners 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 ideasand a new unrestbegin 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, 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 sects secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs.

The story of Franka real historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this dayis the perfect canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. Narrated through the perspectives of his contemporariesthose who revere him, those who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who sees him for what he isThe Books of Jacob captures a world on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence.