The Books of Jacob: A Novel

by Olga Tokarczuk

Other authorsJennifer Croft (Translator)

Hardcover, 2022

Genres

Description

"In the mid-eighteenth 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. 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 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. The story of Frank-a real historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day-is the perfect canvas for the genius and 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 and longing for transcendence"--… (more)

Publication

Riverhead Books (2022), Edition: First Edition, 992 pages

User reviews

LibraryThing member thorold

By Tokarczuk's standards, this seems like a surprisingly straightforward project: a historical novel that follows the career of a real person through a more or less linear time sequence in a well-defined historical period. There are a few minor eccentricities of form — the page numbers count down

from 965, there are reproductions of pages from eighteenth-century books scattered through the text, and the narrator draws on the perceptions of a comatose granny lying in a cave, but for the rest it only really stands out by its vast size and scope, following dozens of characters over wide stretches of Central Europe.

At the heart of the story is the life and work of Jacob Frank, who in the second half of the 18th century became the leader of a millenarian cult that swept through Jewish communities in the south of the Polish Commonwealth, particularly along the Dniester in Podolia (now SW Ukraine). Jacob was hailed by his followers as a successor of the 17th century mystic and self-proclaimed Messiah Sabbatai Zevi. Like most cults before and since, they went in for community of property, free love, charismatic leaders and a notion that all existing laws about diet, sexual behaviour, relations with other religions, etc., had been rendered moot by the approaching end of the world. And, like most cults before and since, it all ended in acrimony, bloodshed and misery for everyone involved.

With a wealth of gloriously imagined period detail, Tokarczuk looks at the way Jacob affected the lives of the people around him, giving rural Jews new hope of escaping from the narrow constraints of the way of life available for them in the Polish Commonwealth, and attracting the attention of naive outsiders who were charmed by the social experiment. The cynical Catholic hierarchy clearly distrusted Jacob's ideas and the motivation of his followers in requesting baptism, but welcomed the opportunity to drive a wedge into Jewish unity. And of course it wasn't long before Jacob's followers and Orthodox Jews were openly accusing each other of unspeakable practices, laying the foundations for a solid Polish tradition of Antisemitism in the coming generations.

Reading this as an outsider, the most interesting thing about it is Tokarczuk's analysis of the way a group and its leaders can slide imperceptibly from radical idealism to embattled self-interest, but there's obviously also a certain amount of deliberate needling of her Polish readers going on here. This is a book set in one of the most iconic periods of Polish history, the half-century in which one of Europe's biggest polities was completely wiped off the map, but it's focusing on a group of Polish people who speak Polish only as a second or third language, have no Catholic heritage, and don't seem to care which king rules over them or what the country they live in happens to be called at that moment. And it's making fun of the Catholic hierarchy and the Polish aristocracy.

Tokarczuk can't resist roping in a few interesting period characters who don't have anything obvious to do with the story, like the formidable Katarzyna Kossakowska, the naive encyclopaedist Father Chmielowski, the poet Elzbieta Druzbacka, and — once we get to a more metropolitan stage — walk-ons for Casanova, Sophie de La Roche, and Empress Maria Theresa. And she follows some of her personal rabbit-holes with anatomical collections and doll's-houses featuring a little more than strictly necessary. But most of these "usual suspects" contribute something reasonably substantial.

Because of the scale, range and complexity this isn't the easiest of books to get into — most of the dozens of characters change their names at least once in the course of the book, most families mentioned go through at least three generations, and we range geographically from Istanbul to Frankfurt. But it is a fabulous, very engaging story, and Jennifer Croft seems to have done a very good job of turning it into English without any but the most minor bumps in the road.

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LibraryThing member hemlokgang

I would describe reading this 992 page piece of historical fiction as a reading journey. In the 1700s, a man named Jacob Frank started his own religious sect. Part Judaism, part Christianity, part Islamic, it was radical and bizarre, but it existed and had followers. The well-researched story is

narrated by third person, often through the eyes and mind of Yente, a wise matriarch who exists in a limbo state between life and death and is able to see all as if from above. I won't lie. At times it was a bit of a slog, yet overall it was fascinating and informative. The author uses Frank's antics to expose the manipulative, greedy, self-serving behavior of persons in positions of power, and above all, the hypocrisy of organized religion. This is a monumental piece of writing, not to be undertaken lightly.

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LibraryThing member adaorhell

holy moly ! someone said there would be a point where people would look at this book and mark this as an important book in the life of a reader, and it is. move over Ulysses.

LibraryThing member Lapsus16

Perhaps too long but engaging

LibraryThing member leoslittlebooklife

Torkazuck’s writing style is absolutely gorgeous which was what made me read this over 900 pages long book until the end. If it would have been written more poorly then I wouldn’t have been able to pull that off because of the detailed lengthinesses of the story.

This is about the life of Jacob

Frank who was a real person living in middle and Eastern Europe during the 17th century and who was seen by a group of followers as a messiah while in fact he was clearly a fraud who manipulated people, a religious fanatic who changed from being a Jew to a Muslim and to a Christian, and who was a sexual predator.

I failed to see any purpose or meaning in this novel, other than to write about the life and times of this religious group. It went on way to long to my taste. Luckily Torkaczuck’s prose proved to be the fuel that kept my reading motor running until the end of this book.

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LibraryThing member maryreinert

Whew! Just finished all 900+pages - some were page turners; some I had to slog through, but what a work of historical fiction which is based on tons and tons of research. Jacob Frank was born into a Jewish community in 18th Century Poland, but took on the role of a messiah believing the Jews needed

to be baptized in order to obtain some sort of everlasting life (some believed that meant here on earth; others not). The Frankish movement as it was called did convert thousands of Jews to some form of Christianity which meant changing their names and abolishing all the Jewish laws held in the Torah. Frank's idea for community "closeness" included sexual encounters with other members of the community regardless of marital status.

There are hundreds of characters in the book; some based on historical figures and some not. Then to make it more complicated, it seems as almost all the characters will at one time or another take a different name. There are many references to food, rituals, clothing, traditions, etc. that are unfamiliar. I kept my phone nearby and looked up so many things. However, in spite of all that, this was such an interesting and compelling read.

The pages in the book are numbered backwards such as was common in Hebrew, but as the author explains in the afterword all matters of custom are just whatever we get used to. (Personally, I liked always seeing how many more pages I had to go - this is a good idea!).

I learned a lot probably not much specifically I'll remember, but the overall forces of the book remains. People in the past have done crazy things and have believed all sorts of theories, dogmas, etc. This really is an amazing book.

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LibraryThing member Gwendydd

I didn't finish this. I'm sure it's very good, but it's very long, and 20% of the way in it just wasn't coming together, and I didn't feel like sticking with it.

LibraryThing member neurodrew

The Books of Jacob
Olga Tokarczuk
Feb 2023

It took me a month to read this long book, slowed by the Polish character names, and the need to look back and recall when I first encountered the character whose perspective is being described. The book describes in detail the lives of Jews and Polish

Christians settled in Podolia in the Polish and Lithuanian commonwealth, starting in 1752, and stretching, in an epilogue to 1825. There are a thousand fascinating details about Talmudist thought, the Kabbala, the geography and landscape of Poland, Ukraine, Turkey and the Balkans, and the history of these lands in the 18th century. It novelizes the true story of Jacob Frank, and the Frankist movement of Jews becoming Christians, and living in exclusive communities believing that Jacob is the Messiah, and that his word is the truth. Jacob will select women to be his hand maidens and lovers, and assign other women to make love to selected men of the communities, even if they are married. So great is the belief that the husbands will encourage this of their wives. Jacob is expelled from the Orthodox Jewish community, and he in turn soundly denounces the Talmud. Jacob tries to convince the Catholic clergy in Warsaw that his people are willing converts to Christianity, winning over a few bishops, but he is, by the end of the first third of the book, imprisoned in the monastery of Częstochowa. His followers bribe and corrupt the soldiers and monks. He dresses like a Turk, lives with many luxuries and female attention. Jacob is released when the monastery is occupied by Russian troops, and he moves with his closets advisors, and his daughter, to Bavaria. He keeps a lavish court, his daughter Eva becomes mistress to the Austrian Emperor, and all of this is financed by barrels or money collected from communities in Poland. In the end, I thought that Jacob was a con man.

There are too many characters, all richly described, to list them all. Notable are Yente, an old woman of the principle family in the first part of the book, who does not die, but is laid in a cave. Her spirit travels over all the action, and she sees things that others cannot. Nahman is originally Jacob’s closest friend, and encourages Jacob to leave Turkey, and to proclaim his version of the doctrine of the Trinity in Poland. Nahman’s journal forms part of the book. Moliwda, a son of a rich Christian family, is throughout the book a translator and intermediary, but conflicted and ultimately traitorous. Madame Kossakowska helps Jacob and his people, hoping for their conversion. Father Chemilowski is a country priest, but writes a dictionary and commentary, that appears in situations throughout the novel.

Difficult but absorbing.

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LibraryThing member motorbike

This is a beautifully written book and superbly translated - you can read this book just for the language. The story is a little harder to follow. The narrative is about the birth, life and death of a Jewish sect in southern Poland (now in Western Ukraine) in the 18th century noted for its

messianistic views, changing religions to Catholicism, and their life experiences and migration over a number of towns and countries. It is full of intricate micro-history of Jewish life in Poland of the time, so this is a great book for history buffs. In between the lines the author offers her insights into religion, humanity and relationships, and the meaning and role of a community - exactly what, I'm not sure.

The leader of the sect is the charismatic Jacob Frank who exploited the messianistic thread in Jewish thought and mixed it with his gift of influencing people, to create a new vision for the community and relationship to God. The old laws no longer applied to them and he encouraged the true believers to break those laws. The way forward was to abandon judaism and embrace catholicism. That brought them into conflict with Jewish communities and forced to find new places to live - to Lwow and then Warsaw. Sympathetic Poles gave them places to live, but Catholic society as a whole remained suspicious of them, eventually having Jacob convicted of heresy, on the back of testimony of his own followers. After being released by the Russians he made his way to Austria, and when he outstayed his welcome moved onto to Offenbach.

Ultimately Jacob is shown to be a selfish, egotistical man, adored unquestioningly by the true believers while he milked them of funds (strangely doing well for themselves, specially when away from Jacob's immediate circle) to support a lavish "court" lifestyle as he supposedly attempted to create a permanent community for the sect. Jacob's defence is that he has lead them out of a land where they had no hope to new opportunities. The good nature of sympathetic others rescued Jacob's court from financial crisis only to have him repeat it in the new place. When Jacob dies the sect fades away as the next generation never is entranced by the cult of Jacob. So is the ultimate message of the book that ideologies are baseless, maintained only by the charisma of the leader who sustains the belief of the faithful who unquestioningly make sacrifices for him? Or is it a process that can create new opportunities for the community?

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LibraryThing member mbmackay

This book had so much potential, but . . .
I enjoyed the first of the 'books' or sections - wonderfully sets the scene in rural eastern Europe in the 17-hundreds. But the second 'book', which introduces Jacob, fails to deliver. The text meanders, the arcane jargon of the religiously obsessed

characters increases exponentially, and I got lost. So, after a quarter of this hefty tome, I've parted ways. Such a shame.

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LibraryThing member Gypsy_Boy

Having read more than 300 pages of Olga Tokarczuk’s Books of Jacob, I want to report on my impressions, particularly since I think it unlikely that I will finish the book. I believe that what I have read—a bit over one-third of the text—is substantial enough to offer a fair opinion. Given the

widespread (but not unanimous) acclaim for the book, I suppose I should add the obvious: this is one reader’s opinion.
At the end of the 960-page book, Tokarczuk’s “Note on Sources” provides a short overview of the historical materials she consulted in writing the book. This note was of particular interest to me since I have my graduate degrees in history. The book, for those who don’t know, consists of many interrelated stories all of which revolve around Jacob Frank, a self-proclaimed Jewish messiah in the 18th century. With respect to one of the stories that periodically recurs, Tokarczuk wrote, “This trail also led me to conclude, firstly, that so many things remain quietly connected, and secondly, that history is the unceasing attempt to understand what it is that has happened alongside all that might have happened as well or instead.”
Quite honestly, I am astonished that she has—apparently—only recently realized these things in her mid 50s. “…so many things remain quietly connected.” That single sentence explains her approach to the story/stories the book encompasses. Although the central story is that of Jacob Frank, much of the novel is Frank’s story illuminated and embroidered upon through many others’ lives and events and thoughts. (I would also mention that Tokarczuk not only includes many other stories, the book also contains several dozen illustrations, not a single one of which is identified, labeled, or otherwise discussed. Most of the illustrations are such small reproductions that any interest or value they might have added is minimized. They are often more a source of puzzlement than anything else since they are simply dropped into the text with no discussion, explanation, or other indication of their significance. It does not help in the least that many are in Hebrew or Polish, languages that many readers will not understand—yet another reason that their inclusion is very nearly pointless.)
The writing is what one expects of Tokarczuk, no more or less. By that I mean, the text reads easily and occasionally includes a particularly nice turn of phrase or image. The writing never flags and, for the most part, it never drags. Unfortunately, it never soars either. Her gifts, which are undeniable, have never—at least in my reading—included beautiful prose or stunning images. The writing and numerous story lines are relatively easy to follow although she uses a lot of untranslated words that are far too often left unexplained. These words are mostly Yiddish or Hebrew although there are also Polish, and less frequently Latin, Turkish, Romanian, Russian, and other words. Occasionally, the context makes clear the meaning; more often, it does not and if you cannot figure out a particular word’s meaning through the context, you have no choice but to close the book and go find out elsewhere what the word means. Given that the book is close to 1,000 pages long, I understand why the publisher might have been disinclined to permit a glossary but the fairly regular use of words from a variety of languages without explanation is both intrusive and annoying.
The breadth and scope of Tokarczuk’s creativity is impressive. She has imagined a world, filled it with generally believable characters who think and act in fascinating ways. If imaginativeness alone were the measure of a great book, The Books of Jacob would qualify. But I don’t think it is enough. Although creativity may be an element of some masterpieces I do not think that it is sufficient basis by itself to justify the label. Beyond her achievement in imagination, I see little in this book to recommend it. Tokarczuk’s writing is no different from her other works: nothing exceptional. It’s very good but it’s not especially noteworthy. Her themes and thoughts, sadly, are so deeply buried that they simply do not allow themselves to be readily discovered. There is too much information, too many tangents, too frequent digressions. Divining Tokarczuk’s message in the midst of so much stuff is difficult at best.
Over and over I got the sense that this book is so long because Tokarczuk found virtually everything that she learned in researching Jacob Frank and his times to be of such interest that she was unable to leave anything out. Topic after topic, tangent after tangent, whether directly relevant, marginally relevant, or arguably completely irrelevant, is included because Tokarczuk couldn’t bear not to share it. The novel constantly reminded me of something my mentor taught me early on in graduate school: just because you discover something in the course of your research doesn’t mean that you need to include it when you write a paper. Information that you learn can inform your knowledge and your writing without having to be shown off. You don’t have to say, in other words, “Look at how much research I did!” The art of writing is often knowing what to leave out. It’s hard to imagine that Tokarczuk left much out.
One could argue that Tokarczuk is simply constructing a context for her central story. Rather than merely tell the story of Jacob Frank, she wants to place him in his time so that the reader will have a better sense of what that period was like, what the religious and philosophical and economic and social debates and issues were about. My response is simple: I have no objection to that and would agree that doing so can enrich the text. Again: the trick is knowing when to stop. And as I have said, Tokarczuk didn’t know when to stop. Enriching is one thing; flooding is something else. There is a story here, a rich and fascinating story. But when the reader must sort through the masses of characters, stories, philosophies, news, and other countless bits of data, the author is abdicating her responsibility. When everything is important, nothing is important.
To the extent that Tokarczuk is raising or wrestling with deep and significant matters—something I am perfectly happy to concede may be her aim—that wrestling, that engagement with those vital matters gets lost when the reader is constantly challenged to tease out the critical from the trivial. The reader will make mistakes and the more the reader is wrong or even simply unsure, the more the author has failed the reader.
I cannot know what lies ahead in the remaining 600 pages of this book. Judging from the reviews I have seen, what I have already read is probably representative of the novel as a whole. I feel no compulsion or obligation to confirm my suspicions. I don’t care enough about anyone or anything in this book to find out what happens. It’s a shame. I come to the conclusion, reluctantly, that for this work at least, the emperor has no clothes. I certainly don't and won't judge her body of work by this so-called magnum opus alone. The book has received frequent, though far from universal, acclaim. I found it self-indulgent and not up to the standards Tokarczuk has set elsewhere. I cannot recommend the novel.

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