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. 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 mid-18th 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.

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. NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, TIME, THE NEW YORKER, AND NPR LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

The comedy in this novel blends, as it does in life, with genuine tragedy.” –Dwight Garner, The New York Times “Sophisticated and ribald and brimming with folk wit.

This could well be a decade-defining book akin to Bolaño’s 2666. “Olga Tokarczuk is one of our greatest living fiction writers. “Just as awe-inspiring as the Nobel judges claimed.” – The Washington Post

The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk