Jakobsböckerna eller Den väldiga färden över sju gränser, fem språk och tre stora religioner, de små ej att förglömma

by Olga Tokarczuk, Jan Henrik Swahn (Translator)

Tiden är mitten av sjuttonhundratalet, platsen Podolien i det sydöstra hörnet av dåtidens Polen, som sträcker sig från Östersjön i norr nästan ända ner till Svarta havet. I söder, på andra sidan gränsfloden Dnestr, tar det Ottomanska väldet vid. Trakten är befolkad av polacker och judar, rusiner och turkar, och som alla gränsland är den platsen för ett ständigt utbyte av handelsvaror och idéer.

I denna historiska korsväg framträder den unge, vackre och karismatiske judiske predikanten Jakob Lejbowicz Frank. Hans läror kommer snabbt att splittra den judiska gemenskapen – för somliga är han en kättare, för andra en frälsare, och snart omges han av en krets lärjungar. Oron kring dem kan ändra historiens gång.

Med sitt överflöd av ämnen och gestalter är Jakobs­böckerna ett litterärt kraftprov av en av det samtida Polens viktigaste och mest lästa romanförfattare. Med stor omsorg om detaljerna frammanar Tokarczuk epokens fysiska verklighet – arkitekturen, kläderna, dofterna. Den undflyende Jakob Frank i bokens centrum är en reell historisk person, men Jakobs­böckerna handlar inte bara om det förflutna. Man kan också läsa romanen som en betraktelse över de vändpunkter som formar både länders och människors öden. I Tokarczuks roman blir sjuttonhundratalets Polen en spegel för de frågor som idag formar var del av Europa.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Poland, Polish Literature, Historical, Religion, Literary Fiction

992 pages, Hardcover

First published October 23, 2014

About the author

Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual. She is one of the most critically acclaimed and successful authors of her generation in Poland. She was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Polish female prose writer for "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life".

For her novel Flights, Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. For Flights and The Books of Jacob, she won the Nike Awards, Poland's top literary prize, among other accolades; she won the Nike audience award five times.

Her works have been translated into almost 40 languages, making her one of the most translated contemporary Polish writers. The Books of Jacob, regarded as her magnum opus, was released in the UK in November 2021 after seven years of translation work, followed by release in the US in February 2022. In March that year, the novel was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.

Source: wikipedia
Photo: Łukasz Giza

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Books of Jacob is a monumental work, featuring a superb English translation by Jennifer Croft. This is rightly regarded as Olga Tokarczuk’s masterwork, an immersive historical novel that breathes life into the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the brink of partition. The society Tokarczuk presents is fluid and permeable. Languages and customs proliferate. What we, 250 years later, regard as fixed - ethnic identity, religious dogma, borders, language - is shown to be in a constant state of flux. It is only afterwards that history gives us a narrative, with labels and boundaries and a trajectory that didn’t exist for those living at the time. The Books of Jacob is a powerful rejoinder to a mode of thought that looks for fixed identities and tidy narratives. Some may find fault with the excessive length and lethargic pace, but the immersive experience and flat narrative arc are key to the journey. The shifting world Tokarczuk brings to life, and its implications for how we should understand ethno-nationalism, make this an unforgettable reading experience.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like (very) wide-ranging historical novels, this is the thing for you; if you don't, I guess you'd better refrain. For more than 900 pages Olga Tokarczuk immerses us in 18th-century Greater Poland which then covered large parts of Eastern Europe. Seen from the West, it was a perifere area, but it stood in intense contact with the Eastern Ottoman Empire, which at that time still controlled almost the entire Balkans. Tokarczuk sketches dozens of characters who constantly go back and forth between those two regions. Most of them are Jews, and the author examines that Jewish world in great detail.

Her central story focuses on a Jewish heretic movement which actually existed in the middle of the 18th century. The movement was led by Jacob Frank, an Ottoman Jew. He was a very unlikely guru, but had an enormous charisma and managed to get tens of thousands of Jews behind his 'Trinity Faith'. He seduced them with an eclectic mix of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which was particularly attractive because it offered the Jews, with their always precarious position in Catholic Poland, the prospect of civil rights through baptism.

Olga Tokarczuk is the most acclaimed Polish writer of the moment (twice the Niké prize, once the Man Booker International prize, and, of course, the Nobel Prize 2018), but with this book she has had a really difficult time in her own country. Her focus on the Catholic discrimination against Jews in Greater Poland was not appreciated by the right-wing, conservative government currently in power in Warsaw. Also the picture she paints of an extremely diversified Polish nation, with a jumble of ethnicities and religious movements that lived together, contradicts the homogenic Polish identity that has been cultivated since the 2nd world war.

But that is precisely what makes this book extremely interesting. The way Tokarczuk brings all these different movements, cultures and ethnicities to life is a feast for the reader's eye. Her narrative style even has a certain Marquezian flair, with a dash of magical realism through the character of the old Yenta who remains in a state of coma for hundreds of pages, and - stepped out of herself - glides through space and time, guiding the story a step further. In the same way, a lot of characters move to and through different regions, making this a novel in which borders (not only physical ones) are lifted.

But there is a downside to this verbal firework, and to this physical and spiritual mobility: the immersion in all those worlds, the dozens of characters, the constant changes in perspective and time, all this makes reading this very bulky book a real ordeal. For instance, it takes a quarter of the book, almost 250 pages, before the story about the heresy of Jacob Frank takes off; until then Tokarczuk builds up, with constantly new characters, and travels back and forth between Poland, the Balkans and Smyrna (present-day Izmir in Turkey). Also the sometimes very intense theological discussions among the Jewish rabbis, diving into kabbala, demand a lot from the reader.

Again: this historical novel is quite a tour de force, not only in terms of size and depth. For me, the charm of the reading was mainly in the Chagal-like character of the visual language of Tokarczuk: she regularly sketches dreamy scenes with the comatose Yenta that floats over time and space and oversees everything. But in the long run it’s all a bit too much: the story just lingers on, endlessly, and I missed a real existential story, with people of flesh and blood. Hence the slightly lesser rating. But I'm definitely going to dive into Tokarczuk's other work!

[BlackOxford · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Grudge Against Creation

We tend to blame the rise of conspiracy theories on the internet and access to social technologies. Of course this is merely down to unawareness of history. Conspiracy has never needed a high-tech enabler to rush around a population. The primitive technology of the human voice can overcome any cultural or political barrier. And when conditions are right the conspiracy is suddenly visible and sucks its adherents from one world into another.

Historically the most ambitious conspiracy theory ever advanced doesn’t involve child-trafficking, stolen elections or the evils of chemical-additive to the water supply. These are trivial claims compared with the rather cosmic conspiracies of the ancient Manicheans and Gnostics. In these theories the scam being run is not by people on each other but by God on all of humanity.

According to the Gnostics, the world that we inhabit is the result of an evil plot carried out by a “power-system”, with either divine approval or acquiescence, in order to torture humanity. This can be demonstrated empirically by simply looking around. The substance of this world is human suffering, not accidental or intermittent suffering, but intentional and unrelenting. As Olga Tokarczuk puts it through one of her characters: “pain is the emperor of this world.”

The Books of Jacob is about this all-encompassing, ancient tale of Gnostic conspiracy updated for use in the modern world. The factual proof, the theoretical explanation, and the available remedies are all here. So are the psychological and sociological reasons for the acceptance of such otherwise outrageous tales. Target audiences are identified and their motivations matched with appropriate media messages. In fact the book is a sort of how-to guide, a play-book, for starting and promoting conspiracy theories effectively.

Gnostics hate the world they inhabit. As Nahman, a follower of Jacob Frank, the principle subject rather than the main character of Ms Tokarczuk’s story, nicely summarises the sentiment, “… from childhood on, I, too, absorbed this eternal grudge against creation.” Some Gnostics want to be elsewhere, usually in a realm of light whose existence is confirmed by the pinpricks of light we can see in the firmament of the night sky. This sort of hopeful emigrant to the stars is sullen but benign. He minds his own business, reads a great deal, and keeps on the lookout for escape. The rest of us hardly notice.

But the other sort of Gnostic, the permanent residents as it were, would prefer a replacement for this world. They are activists. Despite their pessimism, they are also idealists who have a vision, not a vision of some desired end-state but of change, revolution, disruption of the status quo. they want to belong to a movement, religious hippies, perhaps. As Nahman says of himself, he “has the sense that he’s a part of something bigger, something unprecedented and unique.” These gnostics also want revenge and will not be deterred by factual evidence contrary to their views..

Gnostics differ from nihilists in that in that they believe that under new management (theirs) the world could be habitable. But they share with mere destroyers of society ignorance of any positive virtues which new social structures should have. They are aware of their ignorance. They know they’ve been deceived: “Certain facts have been concealed from us, no doubt, and this is why we cannot assemble the world as we know it into a single whole. There has to be a secret somewhere to explain it all.” The Messiah knows the inside story:

“The world doesn’t come from a kind or caring God,… God created all of this by accident, and then he was gone. That is the great mystery. The Messiah will come quietly when the world is submerged in the greatest darkness and the greatest misery, in evil and in suffering. He will be treated like a criminal. So the prophets have foretold.”

Resident Gnostics, consequently, tend toward a Messiah figure in whom they have confidence for working out all the details of social change. Jacob Frank was such a Chosen One in that strange region at the nexus of the Polish, Hapsburg, Ottoman, and Russian empires in the 18th century. As Joseph Roth described the populace so succinctly 200 years later: "...fatherland for them is whatever country decides to conscript them." The Messianic call represents a chance to belong, to be settled, to be recognised. Incredibly Frank got himself recognised by the Priests and hated by the Rabbis - quite a feat for a self-proclaimed Saviour.

The concept of the Messiah is of course Jewish in origin. He is the spiritual and political leader of a new world order. Messiahs act; they preach; they attract crowds; they take control; they confront authority. This is the Judaic ideal. But the apotheosis of the messianic ideal in practice is certainly Christian, having been worked out both spiritually and politically over many generations. The Christian Messiah knows how to rule through his church. Consequently, Jewish Messiahs have proven rather less adept in their Gnostic ambitions than the more established Christian competition.

Messianism always starts as a populist movement. It then moves to infiltrate the establishment. Its ultimate success however depends on its ability to overthrown the establishment in which it has become a junior partner. This is a tricky business. Christians got lucky with Constantine; the Mormons with Eisenhower. But Jacob Frank was rather less so with the Polish bishops. Tokarczuk does a pretty good job of explaining why. Gnostic movements tend to fragment and their Messiahs become increasingly radical as they believe their own press. Like Jesus they are then liquidated. Unlike Jesus, they leave no Gnostic St. Paul to organise the survivors.

One can only hope that QAnon, the various neo-Nazi factions, Steve Bannon and the other Trumpist Republicans don’t read Books of Jacob for tips on subversion. Thinking about it, I consider this a fairly certain bet.

[Adina ( back from Vacay…slowly recovering)]

DNF at 30%

Translated from Polish by the wonderful Jennifer Croft

I tried, I really did. It was my 2nd unsuccessful attempt with Olga Tokarczuk and I will stop here. She is not for me, that's certain.

For the first 100 pages or so I thought there were some good chances that I will enjoy this doorstopper. It was a nice mix of historical documentation, beautiful writing, Jewish mysticism and magical realism. Then Jacob entered the scene and ruined everything. Not only was the character insufferable but the structure seemed to me to disintegrate. Soon, I was sick of weddings, trips and chance encounters between characters.

I understand and appreciate the work that went into writing and translating this novel but the effort to finish it surpasses the payoff. For me, obviously.

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deservedly shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022

Jennifer Croft has been working on this long-awaited translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s epic historical novel for several years, and the result is well worth the wait. To quote from the citation from the Nobel Committee who awarded her the 2019 Literature Prize: “Her magnum opus so far is the historical novel The Books of Jacob, portraying the eighteenth century mystic and sect leader Jacob Frank. The work also gives us a remarkably rich panorama of an almost neglected chapter in European history.”

The full title, a lovely 18th century pastiche, is:
“The Books of Jacob
Or
A fantastic journey across seven borders, five languages and three major religions, not counting the minor sects.
Told by the dead, supplemented by the author, drawing from a range of books and aided by imagination, the which being the greatest natural gift of any person.
That the wise might have it for a record, that my compatriots reflect, laypersons gain some understanding and melancholy souls obtain some slight enjoyment.”.

The book runs to well over 900 pages, of which the core story occupies 865. This is split into seven Books, of which the middle five are the longest, plus a one page Prologue and a brief author’s end note which lists sources and explains why the pages are numbered backwards.

Much of the story is factual, but there are also fanciful and magic realist elements, most notably the omniscient and not quite dead Yente, who observes everything and is introduced in the prologue page. The story often returns to Yente at key moments – its focus frequently switches between characters.

The whole is surprisingly readable, for which Croft has to take great credit, and I enjoyed it greatly, which was one of the main reasons I managed to finish it in less than a week. Some of the detail, particularly the background to the religious beliefs of the Frankists, can be a little more difficult to follow, and I learned a lot of history and historical geography while reading it. The meticulous research and detail is reminiscent of Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy, but at times the story has the exotic flavour of Tyll, though that book felt much more episodic and incomplete. One link between the two is Athanasius Kircher, whose writings are mentioned early on in Book One.

There are also pictures and maps from various historical sources - in most cases their relevance to the text is rather more obvious than was the case for the maps that appear in Flights. The two most useful historical maps are on pages 817-816 (of southern Poland-Lithuania and western Russia) and 729-728 (Eastern Europe and Anatolia under the Ottoman empire) - one intriguing aspect of that map is that Romania appears south of Bulgaria (modern Romania was then mostly Wallachia).

What follows is a very sketchy attempt to summarise the structure, but the book is so full of detail that it barely scratches the surface:

The first book The Book of Fog is largely there to establish some of the more incidental characters in the reader’s mind before the main story gets going, first of all Father Benedykt Chmielowski, vicar forane and dean of Rohatyn in Podolia, who is important to Tokarczuk as the author of New Athens, which was effectively the first Polish “encyclopaedia”. We also meet the poet Elżbieta Drużbacka, whose imagined correspondence with Chmielowski is quoted, the aristocrat and socialite Katarzyna Kossakowska and the Shorrs of Rohatyn, a Jewish family with Sabbatean links, and Bishop Katejan Soltyk, whose actions are largely driven by his gambling debts.

In the second part The Book of Sand, the core story, which is mostly told chronologically, is introduced with the first mention of the main protagonist Jacob Frank. This story is largely told through the writings of one of Frank’s acolytes Nahman Samuel Ben Levi. We hear about Frank’s rebellious childhood and his early travels in the Ottoman empire and Greece. Here he attracts a loyal group of followers and starts to form the ideas that underpin the community. They then travel north, first to Nikopol on the Danube where he meets and marries Hana, a local merchant’s daughter then to Craiova in Wallachia, eventually attempting to return to Poland.

The third part The Book of the Road starts with the community crossing the Dniester back into Poland, where they travel around Podolia attracting followers, coming into conflict with the local Jewish community. The bishop in Kaminiec arranges a disputation to settle the matter and decides in the Frankists favour, but when the bishop suddenly dies they are persecuted and the group is partially disbanded. Eventually they are allowed to form an idealistic community at Ivanie in which all possessions are shared.

The fourth part The Book of the Comet starts with Frank and his acolytes settled in Ivanie, where some of the eccentric rites of the community are described in comic detail. Here Frank decides to convert to Catholicism and negotiates to get them baptised in Lvov. The book finishes with Frank leading an increasingly lavish lifestyle in Warsaw as he attempts to petition the king in search of land for the community to settle, where Frank is eventually arrested and convicted of heresy.

The fifth part The Book of Metal and Sulphur starts with Frank in prison in the monastery at Częstochowa, where his acolytes eventually gather and concludes with his release when the Russians gain control of the city.

The sixth part The Book of the Distant Country covers Frank’s later life after he left Poland, firstly in Brünn (now Brno), where he makes frequent trips to Vienna while his daughter becomes a mistress of the emperor) and later in Offenbach in Germany. During this period the colony lived a lavish aristocratic lifestyle and amassed large debts, largely funded by donations from followers who remained in Poland.

The short final part The Book of Names describes what happened to Frank’s family and followers after his death.

A few links to Wikipedia pages which may help with the background:

People:

Jacob Frank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_F...
Sabbatai Zevi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbata...
Benedykt Chmielowski: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedyk...
Elżbieta Drużbacka: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El%C5%B...

Places/Historical geography:

Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%...
Podolia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podolia
Rohatyn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohatyn
Kamieniec: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamiane...
Smyrna: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smyrna
Salonika: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thessal...
The Ottoman Empire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman...
Nikopol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikopol...
Craiova: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craiova
Lwów: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lviv
Lublin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lublin
Częstochowa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cz%C4%9...
Brünn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brno
Offenbach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offenba...

Religious background:

Sabbateans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbateans
Kabbalah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah

PS I should also say that it seemed a little unfair but rather lucky for me that I received my copy (a pre-order through Waterstones) nearly a week before it reached some of Fitzcarraldo's long term subscribers in the UK.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The messianic machine, how it works

This has taken me six weeks to read but I think this was the right approach for me as this is a book which is monotone in its pacing: much happens but there is no plot as such, no quickening up and slowing down, no fast and slow chapters - it feels sedate though, I should add, never tiresomely so.

The story begins and ends in a somewhat arbitrary way and I'd guess that's part of OT's point: that history doesn't fall into neat named segments (e.g. the Renaissance, the Enlightenment) and is only reconstructed in that way with hindsight and the urge to narrativise, with possibly a politicised agenda either consciously or unknowingly. And narrativisation, story-telling and even myth-making is one of the key themes that jumped out to me when reading this, though there are many others and different readers will attach to various other ideas.

At the purported heart of the book is the 'messiah' Jacob Frank but, cleverly, OT never allows us access to Jacob's own thoughts or feelings: we see him only from the outside, via his actions and through what other people think and say about him. Narratives and points of view proliferate via letters to and from various characters, the book one of Jacob's adherents is writing, debates and discussions. There is no omniscient narrator and while Jacob's grandmother, Yente, floats magically over the story, seeing everything, she has no voice or viewpoint of her own: she's like the proverbial omniscient (i.e. godlike in being all knowing) narrator but with the power to speak withheld. For me, this was a comment on the human construct of stories, something which the book performs.

So, in some sense, this is an unmoored story, free from narratorial (if not authorial) shaping which makes it both unrelentingly postmodern and also wide open to readerly interpretations. It is a book which thinks about what 'history' is, who has the power to write it and how that is done and, as such, is an ideal companion to Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy which also asks intelligent questions about how we construct the past, though Mantel's strong, witty, interventionist voice is not a route that OT pursues.

What I loved alongside the intellectual questions that this book wrestles with is the immersive nature of the world and story-telling. There is real ambition in the breadth of the world that OT recreates: almost like a Breughel painting, the world bustles and individual lives play out quite apart from the way in which they intersect with the story of Jacob. Characters feel 'real' even when they walk into a scene and out again, and the majority of their lives is submerged from our view though we feel the presence of that roundedness.

The other thing that struck me about the quality of the writing is the generous humanity of OT's vision: she is gently humorous at times but also immensely empathetic to, for want of a better phrase, 'the human condition' (yuck!).

So, a book for everyone? Definitely not. But a book that feels like it comes from a Nobel winner? For sure.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 1 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the EBRD Literature Prize 2023
Shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize

They’re just trading supposed wisdoms. They read out whole pages from books, then translate them, and it takes a long time, and everybody gets bored. No one understands what’s going on.

In 2018 I had the pleasure to meet the author and translator of the magnificent Flights, and award them our Man Booker International Shadow Jury Prize, the day before the official Jury concurred with our decision.

But this was a 1,137 page (in the Kindle edition) ordeal. Books of Jacob - the title is semi-accurate as this is several books worth in page count terms, but less than a book in terms of worthwhile material, the ideas and creativity of Flights replaced with Mantelesque padding.

That this was singled out by the Nobel Prize jury, ahead of the much superior Flights and Primeval and Other Times, speaks volumes (literally) to the fetishisation of long novels that blights much of literary culture.

How often does one see a novella referred to as an author’s magnum opus? It almost always in literary fiction circles seems to be associated with a very long work. But the origin of the term isn’t about size. For example in the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths (one of our sister Worshipful Companies in the City) it would be about exquisite skills and hence typically a small refined piece.

Perhaps the term's use in alchemy offers some justification for its application to heavily research work, but the output of the process was what mattered, the Philosopher's stone and ultimately a nugget of gold. Whereas here, as with Jacob's own unsuccessful attempts unfortunately, they are unable to produce a single piece of gold or even silver by March. In the innumerable vessels and jars, all that appears from time to time are stinking liquids and every possible type of ash.

Authors, editors and translators should instead be praised for cutting material. As Michelangelo almost said: The novella is already complete within the tome, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.

I am also a massive fan of publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions, I subscribe to their books and have read every one of their 44 blue-covered novels.  However, I will call them out here for their tone deaf response to campaign for translator's names to be featured on the cover of novels, particularly as it was begun by the translator of this very tome. They've managed to print this book in a larger size, add a Nobel Prize logo on the front, add reference to an English PEN award, but not to add the words "translated by Jennifer Croft".

Disappointing all round.

[Ron Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Polish author Olga Tokarczuk was not a household name in the United States when she won the 2018 Nobel Prize for literature. It didn’t help that the Swedish Academy centered its praise on “The Books of Jacob,” an arduous-sounding novel that wasn’t available in English.

It especially didn’t help that the academy announced Tokarczuk’s award along with the 2019 Nobel Prize for Peter Handke, an Austrian writer sympathetic to Yugoslavia’s late genocidal leader, Slobodan Milosevic. That controversy sucked up attention for days and risked rendering Tokarczuk merely “the other winner.”

But nothing should overshadow Tokarczuk’s literary presence in the United States now. “The Books of Jacob” is finally available here in a wondrous English translation by Jennifer Croft, and it’s just as awe-inspiring as the Nobel judges claimed when they praised Tokarczuk for showing “the supreme capacity of the novel to represent a case almost beyond human understanding.” In terms of its scope and ambition, “The Books of Jacob” is beyond anything else I’ve ever read. Even its voluminous subtitle is a witty expression of Tokarczuk’s irrepressible, omnivorous reach. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Talkincloud · Rating 5 out of 5]

To była długa przeprawa, ale... warto. "Literatura to szczególny rodzaj wiedzy, to doskonałość form nieprecyzyjnych".

[Adam Dalva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary how strong an achievement BOOKS OF JACOB ended up being - the more I think about the scope and ambition of the project, the better it seems to me. It’s the story of a cult - a real one, Jacob Frank - and the first 250 pages or so are about the collection of the figures of the cult. The boldness of the text (it counts backward instead of forward, is narrated by a woman who can’t die, has interpolated photos and pictures and many forms of prose), the transportive quality of the research, and the plot, which really gets its hooks in as it goes, is all very notable. And what a translation by Croft! Very grateful to have read it

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

A little joke for my Jewish friends….(for those who have not read this book yet) …..
…Begin reading before the High Holy days:
God will grant you lots of extra Mitzvah points ….
for good behavior—(erases at least a dozen sins from the past year)….
….. Shana Tova 🍏🍯

Jacob Frank (1726-1791) —
An 18th century merchant led a controversial mystical and quasi-Christian movement whose devotees believed orgies were religious acts.

Jacob Frank ‘boasted’ his ignorance of the Talmud (Hebrew teachings and commentaries of the Torah that form the basis for Jewish law)….
and instead started preaching a variation on Shabbatean theology, (from the charismatic-proclaimed Messiah—Shabbetai Zevi —a century before him)—
who was believed by many to be the ultimate redeemer and an incarnate aspect of the kabbalistic godhead…
who displayed a particular interest in women and was especially attracted to them.
Married? Attached to another love-partner?
Ha….
like his preceder, Jacob didn’t believe in sexual boundaries.
Polygamy 101…could be said to have been created by Jacob Frank.
…..[count our blessings today in 2022, ladies! 💃]

Ok… getting serious …
I mean this is a serious Noble Prize winning novel … a sleek 900+ page historical novel … or perhaps you prefer 40+ hours of listening —
( or both: read and listen as I did)….
Twice as long - twice rewarded!
I figure I put in my ‘Mitzvah Points’ (haha)reading this book before the Jewish High Holidays — coming up soon.
I’m preparing for the day of atonement- shedding my sins - getting a head start before the day of atonement: Yom Kippur.
Ha….
Note: Paul wanted to know my deep secrets of everything I did wrong this past year? — am I going to whip my tush in punishment too?
…..No….I am not telling my sinful secrets —or whipping my own ass ——
reading this door-stopper was my spiritual cleansing: (my repentance and amends to all this past years wrongdoings)

Gotta laugh at ourselves - a little when we commit ourselves to reading this book. …..I figure if I understood half of it - God rewards me….
Seriously though…..this book is as ambitious and astonishing as the Big Boys and Women have told us it is….

IT’S NOT A BOOK FOR THOSE who run from history, religion, laws, Kabbalhaism, mysticism, cultural storytelling fiction, rich details of every cup and saucer, superstitions, ethnocentric nationalism political issues, socialism, competition among states, people, believers, and non-believers. ….
or a book with challenging Polish names -Latin and Hebrew names -
However …
if in the right mood — ready to role up your sleeves —
and are up for the challenge to read, study, reflect, and examine the impact that nationalism gave to people, (a sense of identity)….
Kabbalistic, Shabbatean, Christian beliefs, and antinomianism (any view that rejects laws or legalism and argues against moral, religious, or social norms)….
salvation- faith - divine grace — and humor—
following along with Jacob’s followers…
who believed that they were obligated to break free from the restraints of Jewish Law…..
and
participating in orgies were religious acts…..
Then this book is for ‘you’.

Ha…
Doesn’t this book sound fun?
A walk along the beach?
Ok…
sure it was long, hard at times - but so much was fascinating—
—In the face of persecution from the organized Jewish community, group members saw protection from the Catholic church telling the local Catholic bishop that they rejected the Talmud and recognized only the Zohar, a Jewish mystical text.
They also told Catholic authorities that they recognized the Messiah as part of the Trinity.

I found myself going to Google — wanting to understand for myself the beliefs in the doctrine of the Trinity — (a word not found anywhere in the Bible)….as it is completely incongruous with scriptural understanding of God. “God is not three persons. There is only one God and it is the father”.

It seemed to me the further my own research went into understanding ‘The Trinity’ …..[Catholics believe in one single God, who made himself known to the world (revelation) to three separate persons: God the Father, God the son (Jesus) and God the Holy Spirit. …
But Jews believe in one God….(not three) ….
Christians and Messianic Jews empathically believe in one God and only one God.

I found myself spinning off into reading about the meanings behind religious rituals and beliefs: Hebrew roots ….Baptism…
moral ambiguities…. Polish nobility’s…. Jews living under Christian rule before the Holocaust….
I also needed to read - and study Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (high levels of ethnic diversity)…. and Warsaw Confederation………
I thought about the difference’s today — and in 1791 — between Catholicism being the dominate religion unlike the Warsaw Confederation Act -1573 - where religious freedom varied over time.

Then I looked up “Modeling the Future of Religion in America”….in 2022..
The article I read was interesting and was written just five days ago.
“Since the 1990’s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join a growing ranks of U. S. adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’. This accelerating trend is reshaping a U.S. religious landscape, leading many people to wonder what the future of religion and American might look like”.

So …..
….what did I take away from ‘The Books of Jacob”….Jacob Frank, and his followers? …..
AS MUCH AS I COULD!
….About ….
….the Polish Jew Jacob Frank,
….Yente…..(our storyteller)…Jacob’s grandmother,
….Religious laws and old customs of old books:
“He who reads those old books and observes those laws and customs, it is as if he’s always facing backward, and yet he must move forward. That is why he will stumble and ultimately fall. Since everything that has been has come from the side of death. A wise man, meanwhile, will look ahead, through death, as though this were merely a muslin curtain, and he will stand on the side of life”.
….village life in Poland (loved all the descriptions in the market place and Bazaar….of silks, leathers, tapestries, etc. etc)…
….Frontiers of the Ottoman Empire
….Laws and hierarchies
….Multi-cultural society: Jews, Catholics Armenians, Poles, Ruthenians, etc.
“A fantastic journey across seven borders, five languages, and three major religions, not counting minor sects”
….Profound history … mysticism and superstitions …..
Political issues related and defined by various ethnicities: religion, language, ethnic, romantic, civic, cultural, state, Socialism, ideology, loyalty, devotion, alliances, obligations, anarchism, liberal and revolutionary nationalism, Diaspora….
…. Challenging names: Polish, Latin, Hebrew, German….
(I felt warmth with the familiar Jewish names: Nachman, Mordecai, Asher, Leah, Tovar….etc…etc..)….

….”A colossal work - an epic, a fable, a history, sometimes a satire, always a magnum opus”
——NPR

….”Funny, tragic, comprehensive, and at times hilariously graphic . . . both earthy and ethereal”
——Boston Globe

A few excerpts — sample writings I picked to share…..
“At least the floozy has the decency to die on her third day in childbed, as often happens with older women, their time having obviously passed. She is survived by a little girl, tiny bit in perfect health, whom Princess Jabtonowska is ready to give to the peasants in the village and maintain from a far. But Mrs. Kossakowaka’s arrival in Busk causes the matter to take a different course. For Mrs. Kossakowska, having no children her self, had been thinking about setting up an orphanage, with the help of Bishop Sottyk, but somehow the idea had never quite become a priority. Now she asks Princess Jantonowska to keep the infant on her estate for a little while, until she can ready the shelter”.

“Jacob plays with the children. He makes silly faces, and the children love it. After the communal meals, the afternoons are dedicated to the children; The youngest are accompanied by their mothers, and they—only barely out of childhood themselves—like playing too. They squeal and compete over who can make the scariest face. It is hard to make little children’s faces disgusting, but Jacob’s face can truly transform.
Shrieks resound when he is playing monsters and demons, when he acts like the limping batakaben do. When the children have calmed down, he has them sit down around him, and he tells them complicated fairytales, about princesses on glass mountains, simpletons, and princes. There are adventures at sea and evil wizards who turn people into animals. The ending he often puts off until the next day, leaving the whole of Ivanie’s younger population distracted, living for what morrow will bring. Will the hero be able to free himself from the donkey’s body to which he was condemned by a jealous woman?”

Jacob Frank, and the Frankists….. [extremists] — members of the sect were constantly being impelled against their will by their protectors to assist in the preparation of anti-Jewish propaganda, and to formulate declarations which were intended to wreck destruction upon Polish Jewry….
…….but was Frank and his followers all bad?
……I’ll leave this question sitting….
But note .
Frank was arrested ….

I recommend reading this for a powerful reading experience — (take what you can from it)
it’s deeply penetrating — affecting— eye opening - thought provoking — and just one hell of a MASTERFUL profound novel and reading undertaking …..
but as one reviewer said:
“If you struggled with Ulysses, this is not for you”
( gotta laugh for a dozen reasons)……
But truthfully anyone can read it (thank you to Google, other reviews and commentaries, friends to discuss this with)….

Last….
congratulations to Olga Tokarczuk ….. (Brilliance is Born)!

And Jennifer Croft …..outstanding translation!

[Katia N · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update: It was long-listed for the International Booker Prize 2022.

Someone said: "History is what a certain time period notices in the other.”. This book has made me thinking once more what is a historical novel. There are two broad ways how to look at it. A historical novel might be a book when the author takes a certain time period, creates a bunch of fictional characters to show how this time period would affect the thoughts and actions of these imaginary people. The main idea might be to show the historical forces in play and their affect on the individual lives. This is not such a novel.

This is closer to something which Javier Cercas defines as a non-fiction novel. Olga T takes the lives of people that really existed, adheres to the facts of those lives as close as she could. But at the same time, she uses the techniques that are expected from a novel. She pays huge attention to the narrative voices. And the novel is totally poly-vocal. She also uses a complex structure when the narrative is developing in three separate layers complementing each other. The structure holds together by the voice or rather gaze of Yente, the women who cannot die and sees everything from above. Olga T. calls this “the 4th person narration”. I guess Yente is the only character Olga T. Has fully created as opposed to rediscovering from history. The novel is full of diaries, old books extracts, letters and even poems. I found also the included contemporary illustrations add to atmosphere.

Her characters are the 18th century Eastern European Jews, catholic priests and some Polish aristocracy. The main subject is Frankism - the heresy founded around Jacob Frank who considered himself a Messiah and had built a movement with the help of his disciples. They believed among other things that the conversion into Christianity is the necessary step to achieve their religious goals.

Sects and their power is a strange subject that might feel even alien for some readers. Olga T does not seem to be interested in creating the awareness of the broader context or attracting the readers through some cheap tricks like imaginary plot twists. She seems to be interested in investigate exactly this - strangeness. Her characters exits on the margins of their societies and cultures constantly transcending those margins geographical, religious and social. They are eternal strangers:

“There is something wonderful in being a stranger, in being foreign, something to be relished, something as alluring as sweets. It is good not to be able to understand a language, not to know the customs, to glide like a spirit among others who are distant and unrecognisable. Then a particular kind of wisdom awakens – an ability to surmise, to grasp the things that aren’t obvious.”

This novel is very successful in demonstrating this and showing how something potentially new is painfully appearing through the cracks in the old.
This novel focuses on the individuals. There are so many of them. Olga T. takes equal care in depicting an old catholic priest writing an encyclopaedia, a Jewish woman maintaining the accounts for Jacob and being the one of his many mistresses or an assimilated Jewish convert who becomes a lawyer and revolutionary to be subsequently executed by the French Commune. All these people have names. Many of them even have two sets of names as they’ve converted. Sometimes, it was hard to follow who is who. But at some stage I stopped caring that much. And the lasting impression it has created on me was of polyphony, being totally absorbed by the chorus of those voices. They have become the real people of me. Olga T. convinced me of their past existence. It is quiet a poignant feeling. It reminded me of In Memory of Memory where the author contemplates whether to quote the letters of her deceased relatives. To quote them would be to bring once more their existence into the spotlight before the eternal darkness. Not to quote would mean let them fade forever without a trace. I had a similar feeling here. Olga T. has successfully brought these ordinary people back from that darkness where they’ve been for centuries .

What I struggled with is a relative obscurity of Jacob’s Frank’s character. He is represented in the novel only through the eyes of his followers. And, at the end I was not totally convinced what was that uniqueness that has attracted them to him or his teaching. From an interview I’ve read I understood Olga T just could not find a voice to deal with such type of a personality. And because of it, there is an empty space in the middle of the novel. There is also a symbol for it - a cave. There was a special cave into which Jacob went as a boy to hide in Korolevka. HIs wife was also buried in a cave. The cave is a good symbol of his ambivalence. More generally, it is a good metaphor for the the absence of dichotomy of good and evil. A cave could be a place to be lost forever. Buy equally it could be a place of refuge. Interestingly enough, this particular cave in Korolevka was just this. During the Nazi’s occupation, a few dozen Jews were hiding there for two years. It saved their lives.

This story of a relatively obscure Jewish movement in pre-modern times has made me think how we all need the other to understand ourselves better. But also how easily the persecuted could turn the coats and become the persecutors themselves, and even more generally - the fluidity of any identity perceived as a cast in stone.

Overall the impression I’ve got from this novel that is full of strangeness but also full of energy. And by the end, I was immersed in its atmosphere. She builds it with a lot of details. Sometimes it felt excessive. Sometimes I would miss the voice of the character I liked while reading the voices I cared less. But it adds up into the whole. Olga T. said:

“Sometimes I think about this type of writing as panoptic. I like to create a scene, and characters, and let them live. I like to look down on relationships from above; I believe that reality is not a series of individual, isolated subjects and objects but the infinite quantity of relations between them. I see reality as the stage for these relationships—not only those between the subjects, but also their relationships with objects, and with nature. It would be hard to give an account of any kind of social process without incorporating this multiplicity of points of view, this interaction of so many energies.”

I could see that this book could not be everyone’s cup of tea. It is probably not a page-turner. But it is a stylish novel that has a lot to say about the traces of the vanished world in our present and takes its time to do so.

PS:

I've found this wonderful article, the translation of Olga's essay "How I wrote The Book of Jacob". I think it would be helpful to anyone who plans to read or indeed has read this novel:

https://www.calvertjournal.com/articl...

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a massive achievement. Imagine Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell series, but in an all-in-one volume and with the emphasis not necessarily on its main character, but on many others. “Many others” is an understatement. There are a ton (a slight exaggeration) of characters, some with the same first names, and many who change names when they change religions, though Tokarczuk (and Croft too, I’m sure) does an amazing job helping the reader to keep it all together.

I’m the kind of reader that needs to remind myself of a character’s exact role if I’ve forgotten, so I was paging back quite a bit, or rather using the Kindle’s search function, which came in handy when I thought I couldn’t remember a character only to discover the name was mentioned the once. Don’t let that put you off though, as the main characters do rise to the top.

At times the details may seem overwhelming, but it’s a fascinating historical account. Some of my favorite sections are of Yente, an arguably superfluous element that even I wondered if she was necessary at one juncture. But I read Tokarczuk for her meaningful flights of whimsy, of so-called magical realism (See Primeval and Other Times); for her trademark metaphors like games and mushrooms (See House of Day, House of Night); her bringing together of fragments (See Flights). The fragments here are “scraps” written by one of Jacob’s earliest and most fervent followers. The impact of books, of libraries, of writing, of translation (certainly all relevant to the needed research into this opus) is another thing I loved.

Though I never got a sense of why Jacob was able to attract such devoted followers—who can explain such a phenomenon?—this story from the mostly 18th century into the 19th with a brief jump to the 20th century for the beautiful tying-up of the Yente story has tremendous relevance for the 21st.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the "Books of Jacob", Olga Tokarczuk reiterates the point made by the great Jewish Theologian Gershom Scholem that study of the Talmud is the very foundation of Judaism. Mystical practices such as Kabbalah have the potential to lead the practitioner into heresy. Unfortunately if one is not interested in becoming a better Jew, Tokarczuk's novel can be quite tedious. The great of success of the "Books of Jacob" is due to the fact that it also recounts the decline and fall of the Polish Commonwealth (1569-1795). The "Books of Jacob" offers the reader two tracks, both will be difficult for the Anglo-Saxon reader.
The primary focus of the novel is to tell the story Frankism a heretical Jewish schism that at the time of the French Revolution may have had as many as 500,000 followers in the Polish Commonwealth. Jacob Frank the leader of this movement was born in Podolia (a region found in today's Ukraine). Frank's family had been members of the millenarian Sabbatian movement which had called on its members to convert to Islam because Mosaic Law no longer applied at the "End of Days".
Frankism was essentially a continuation of the previous heresy. Frank began his mission in the 1750's. Frank proposed that a Trinity of Messiahs existed. The first was Sabbataï Tsevi, the founder of Sabbatianism. Barukhia (the successor to Sabbataï Tsevi was the second while Frank himself was the third. The Frankists called themselves antitalmudists. They converted to Catholicism, took Christian names and generally enraged conventional Jews.
Frank extracted large amounts of money from his followers that he used to maintain a large court which he hoped would impress a Christian monarch to ennoble him and grant him a territory where he could live with his group. Over 20 years, he approached in turn the Polish Monarch, the Austrian Emperor and the Russian Tsar. Frank died in 1791. At this point, the European dynasties were too distracted by the French revolution to pay any intention to Frank. Frank's daughter, Ewa, maintained a court in Offenbach am Main until her death in 1816 after which the Frankist movement dissolved rapidly.
Tokarczuk tells us nothing good about Frank. He was an apostate Jew and a completely insincere Catholic. He liked to humiliate those in his entourage and financially exploited his flock. He was an unrestrained profligate who pushed his daughter into the bed of the Austrian emperor in search of a title and a land grant.
The brilliance of Tokarczuk is how she situates Frankism in the Polish Commonwealth which after two centuries is about to crumble and disappear. Frank grows up in the Ukrainian part of the Polish Commonwealth speaking Yiddish, Ladino and Turkish. He will not start to learn Polish until he begins to lobby the Polish king for land. He will never learn Ukrainian. He has no understanding of the literature or culture of Catholic Europe.
The ignorance of the Poles with respect to the Jews is as great. None speak Yiddish or have any knowledge of the Jewish religion. Although they have accorded the Jews a place in their Respublica, they have horrible prejudices and pogroms occur on an intermittent basis.
The Poles have mismanaged their affairs. The Polish Commonwealth has become a political condominium controlled by Russia and Prussia. Over the time frame of the novel, the Poles will stage two revolts causing their country to be formally partitioned by Austria, Russia and Prussia.
The Poles are quite confused as to what they are culturally. Latin is the language of the courts and the main markets. Their poets and other writers are unsure whether to use Latin or to infuse large number of Latin words into Polish so as to modernize it.
The Poles do not know what to do with the Frankists. For the most part they do not wish to see them convert to Christianity and in practical terms have no way to accommodate them. The Jews have their own parliament (diet) and courts. Eighty-five percent (85%) of them are agricultural workers who live in Shtetls where they are assigned to a Rabbi who is responsible for paying a head tax to the Polish King for every adult male in his care. Once Christianized then the Jews in the Shtetls should become serfs. In fact some of the Polish nobles generously agree to accept them. Frank of course wants none of this. He wants to have a title and to make his followers his serfs. Ultimately, the Polish king will reject Frank's request and put him in prison for 13 years. (What Tokarczuk does not explain is that after the Napoleonic wars, those Jews who had been in Shtetls prior to converting to Christianity were simply sent back.)
At times Tokarczuk paints a picture of Poles that is not very flattering. In particular, she devotes a lot time to the blood libel according to which Jews were in the practice of killing Christian children so as to add their blood to Passover matzos. Early in the novel Bishop Kajetan Ignacy Sołtyk (1715-1788) who has heavily indebted himself to a Jewish moneylender to cover his gambling losses has the moneylender and six other Jews executed on the charge of having killed a peasant child to use his blood for ritual purposes. The Vatican is outraged. The Pope writes to all the Polish bishops to remind them that the blood libel has no basis in fact and orders that they stop disseminating it. In fact the blood libel will continue to be propagated throughout the novel. The Pope will rebuke them on every occasion but will never be able to enforce his authority. Tokarczuk is presumably trying to get her readers to see the parallels with the present day as the Vatican is waging a constant battle to suppress anti-Semitic and xenophobic comments from certain organizations who proclaim themselves to be Catholic.
The "Books of Jacob" is a masterpiece of literature of this century. However, for someone unfamiliar with the history of Poland and of Poland's Jews in the second half of the eighteenth century, it will be a very tough slog. I would advise reading Gershom Scholem's "Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism" and Norman Davies' "Gods Playground" before undertaking the daunting challenge of reading this book.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

127th book of 2021. All pictures in the review are from Vol.co.

Firstly, I gotta say I'm a big Tokarczuk fan and respect her as much (or more) after reading this beast. This beast is too long and I've got my problems with it, but what a novel to have written. Spanning the 18th century, and beyond, and the historical figure Jacob Frank, a man believed to be the Messiah. Though the novel is certainly centred around him, Jacob floats in and out of the narrative (in fact, he doesn't actually appear in the narrative for the first 200 or so pages) and instead we get a sweeping 'panorama of an almost neglected chapter in European history', as said by the Nobel Committee. The novel crosses several borderlines and characters, including the most interesting character, Yente, Tokarczuk's 'fourth-person narrator', the woman who cannot die and instead flies about the novel's events as an omnipresent 'eye'.



There are pictures interspersed through the novel as her Flights was, there are letters, and diaries too. It is a sometimes overwhelming experience reading the novel, being physically larger than paperback size and big-enough-to-wrestle in length. Its most overwhelming feature is down to its first flaw. The Books of Jacob is readable enough, Tokarczuk doesn't bog it down with historical exposition or long religious ideas, but she does tell the novel in a very detached and unemotional way. For mostly 900-odd pages the tone of the novel stays the same, there's no rise or fall, nothing: it is like one very long road which is oftentimes interesting and oftentimes simply exhausting. Did it need to be so long? I'd say No. If it were shorter it would probably be a better novel. There are so many characters, so many plots, we hear about what they are doing, thinking, moving around, marrying, it is a constant barrage of stuff, fictional or not. And when it comes to wondering what is historical truth in the novel and what isn't, Tokarczuk answers that herself in a way. When a character asks another character to write a novel about the Frankists and how it was, he asks, ''But how were things? Is there anybody still around who could tell me?'' and the friend answers, ''You're a writer, just make up whatever's missing.''



Tokarczuk certainly does that with the depth of the novel and the characters like Yente. For those daunted by the size, it is wonderfully readable, almost simple in prose. There are moments of beauty but I would say it is almost entirely character-driven. This is ironic as Jacob Frank is unlikeable at almost every point. Fans of Tokarczuk should read it simply because it is hailed as her magnum opus and maybe it is. It's ambitious and ambitious writing always gains my respect whether I like it or not. It is a portrait into an interesting part of the world for me, an interesting time period, and focused on men accused of being Jews, but then becoming Muslims, but then being taken into the Catholic faith. If you like big books on history and religion then really look no further. Otherwise, it depends how much time you have and how much you like Olga. I'll add more thoughts when they are better organised but for now I can say it was a good experience but I'm glad it's over and back on the bookcase smiling the 'I've been read'-smile.

[Люда Дмитрук · Rating 5 out of 5]

Тут не вистачає зірочок, щоб оцінити силу моєї любові до цієї книги. Закінчила читати і ще півгодини просто сиділа в тиші. Якось зберуся написати щось змістовне про неї, а зараз просто скажу, що вона прекрасна 💔

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yente watches all of this - the similarity of the events draws her attention. Over time, moments occur that are very similar to one another. The threads of time have their knots and tangles, and every so often there is a symmetry, every once in a while something repeats, as if refrains and motifs were controlling them, a troubling thing to notice. Such order tends to overburden the mind, which cannot know how to respond. Chaos has always seemed more familiar and safe, like the disarray in your own drawer.

I really don’t feel qualified to comment on this book. It is 900 large pages of smallish print with substantial chunks taking the form of correspondence which is in an even smaller font and italics. This is part of the reason why it is a hard book to read: I have to acknowledge that my 61 year old eyes needed frequent breaks because they got very tired whilst reading this.

But this is also a complex book and I really do defy anyone to hold the plethora of perspectives together for the full duration of the book. The Jacob of the title is Jacob Frank who, in 18th century Poland, declared himself to be the messiah and established a following whilst creating quite a stir. And in this book a picture of Jacob Frank emerges via the perceptions of a host of other people. For someone who is supposedly the central subject of the book, it is notable that we never spend time alone with him, never hear his thoughts, but always have things filtered through the viewpoint of others. One of the key characters, a narrative device that holds the whole book together, is Yente, Jacob’s grandmother, who spends most of the book hovering in a space between life and death and also hovering, in an “out of body experience” kind of way, above all the events that are recounted. Yente can move around in space and time and dips in and out of people’s stories. Overall, the book moves forward chronologically, but, within that, it makes frequent time jumps backwards to recount events from different perspectives. This combination of multiple story threads and jittering timeline make for a disorienting read, especially when it is maintained over almost 900 pages.

For me, the reviewer at The Sunday Times does a good job of summarising, although I lost a bit of confidence in her (Antonia Senior) when she referred to the backwards counting pages as starting at 892 and ending at 1. In fact, the book finishes on page 27, so I wonder if this reviewer actually made it as far as the end. Or perhaps she felt it was just too long-winded in a review to try to explain about finishing at page 27. And I think I am proving her right. The backwards counting is a nod to books written in Hebrew, as well as a reminder that every order, every system, is simply a matter of what you’ve got used to. The reason for finishing at page 27 is not explained.

Here’s what Antonia Senior has to say which expresses it far better than I could:

So, genius or hubris? Tokarczuk shows impressive skill in recreating an entire era and world, which ranges from Poland to Smyrna and Vienna. Yet her real genius lies in the cast of characters she has conjured up; dozens, each fully realised, from an emperor downwards. Old rabbis and young mothers, a gambling addicted bishop and a dying grandmother, aristocrats and jealous wives, a female poet and a melancholy doctor.

She is also ambitious in her willingness to ask (and sometimes answer) extraordinarily large questions through these character studies. Why are people willing to believe in charlatans? Why do humans long for salvation? How can you reconcile God with the squalor of His creation? What is the relationship between the human and the divine? The only question she does not answer is: what does this self-proclaimed messiah believe?

Holding it all together for 900 pages is incredible, but that is not what makes this book great. Tokarczuk, unafraid and ambitious, creates a very fallible messiah, yet makes it seem reasonable and human to believe in his divinity. That is a kind of literary miracle.

I can understand those who take the opposite view and see this as hubris rather than genius. But for me, a 900 page book that I feel I would like to read again can only mean one thing: 5 stars.

Oh, and literature is an important theme in this book. The first section discusses reading books, for example, and the second writing them. There's discussion of translation and interpretation.

For what are we to do with such a brittle stuff as paper? What can come of writing books?

[Beata · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pierwsza powieść Olgi Tokarczuk na którą się zdecydowałam i ... wciągnęła mnie! Opisy i atmosfera niesamowita, historie które nie pozwalają zapomnieć o sobie.

[Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤]

No rating, it's a DNF

I made it to page 99 (of 992 pages) and am throwing in the towel. I love Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead but this? 

1. It's boring.

2. There are many characters and I'm struggling to keep track of who is whom. This is partly because the names are unfamiliar to me and I have no clue how to pronounce them (not the author's fault), making them hard to remember. 

3. There are letters and books written by the characters and these are in teeny-tiny print that even my twenty year old eyes would have struggled to read, let alone my middle aged eyes. Why? Why do authors do this? It's just as bad as putting entire paragraphs or pages in italics. 

Do authors who subject us to this hate their readers, wanting to strain our eyes and induce migraines?

As for #2, yes, I know. I could probably find pronunciations on google or youtube. I can't get interested enough in these characters to do that though, which is unlike me. When I don't care how to pronounce a character's name, it's a pretty good sign that... it's boring.

[AiK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Написано много книг, посвященных основным религиям, но совсем мало, посвященных различным ересям. "Книги Якова" восполняет этот пробел, пусть это и художественная литература, тем не менее такой человек существовал в реальности.
Ольга Токарчук проделала большой труд, изучив источники и написав поистине огромный и по объему и по региональному, временному и конфессиональному охвату в конкретном историческом контексте Речи Посполитой, границы которой простирались вплоть до Османской империи, и последующего тройного раздела страны.
Яков Франк выступает сложной личностью, с несомненно сильным характером, одновременно противоречивым и гибким, и сумасшедшей харизмой. Он объявил себя Мессией и извлекал из этого все возможные выгоды.
Роман исполнен глубокой толерантности, это с одной стороны радует, а с другой - было ли это на самом деле? На дальнем плане Токарчук неизменно напоминает о погромах, но герои книги избежали такой участи.
Переход последователей Франка в католицизм, причем всей общиной, что претендовало на крупнейшее по масштабу вероотступничество, что не могло не цениться католической церковью, сопровождался небывалой поддержкой польской знати, когда знатные паны давали свои громкие фамилии новообращённых христианам. Но герои до конца сохраняли двойные имена.
Большой интерес вызвал факт диспутов между ортодоксальными раввинами и франкистами. Обычно с еретиками не дискутируют.
Книга заинтересовала глубоким погружением в историю Польши и ее важной и большой составной части - еврейской общины.

[Rafal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ta powieść to bez wątpienia wielkie dzieło. Wielkie Dzieło.

Wielkie Dzieła są zwykle wymagające wobec czytelników i tak jest z tą powieścią. Nie mam wrażenia, że zawsze stawałem na wysokości zadania. Zachwyciła mnie rozmachem. Ale niestety tak ogólnie mnie nie zachwyciła.

Dla każdego, kto - tak jak ja - lubi obcować z piękną narracją Tokarczuk, z jej soczystym, barwnym językiem - ta powieść będzie ucztą. To wielka epopeja, pełna niezwykłych postaci - z których bynamniej nie tytułowy Jakub Frank jest najciekawszy. Czytałem ją bardzo długo, bo tyle samo co czytanie, zabrało mi grzebanie w poszukiwaniu informacji o bohaterach. Muszę przyznać, że bardzo mnie pobudziła intelekutalnie i wzbogaciła, jeżeli chodzi o wiedzę o tych czasach. Do tego jest zadbana formalnie. Bardzo to lubię w literaturze.

Natomiast nie ukrywam, że lektura tej książki bywa ciężka. Lawina bohaterów, którzy w dodatku w pewnym momencie zmieniają nazwiska, więc każdego trzeba zapamiętać dwa razy - potrafi przytłoczyć. Tytułowy Jakub Frank - to dziwna postać. Sekciarz, wielbiony przez swoich wyznawców, których bezustannie wykorzystuje finansowo, oraz wyznawczynie, które wykorzystuje seksualnie. Nie bójmy się tego słowa - w ujęciu autorki Frank jest także pedofilem, gwałcącym nawet własną córkę. Ale to nie jest powieść o pedofilii. Nawet nie wiem, czy to jest powieść o Franku, bo jego przemyślenia, filozofia, religia - są jedynie tłem powieści. Nawiasem mówiąc - ilekroć zaczyna rozważania religijne, to raczej ma się wrażenie, że to dyrdymały.
I prawdę mówić nie bardzo wiem, o czym jest ta powieść. Być może o tolerancji (czy świecie bez niej). Lub o tym jak niewiele trzeba by w imię wiary zacząła się lać krew. A może o czymś innym, czego nie udało mi się uchwycić, albo co mi uknęło w tej powodzi pięknych zdań. A może ktoś z czytelników mi podopowie - chętnie o tym porozmawiam...

Ja jestem z pokolenia "Stu lat samotności". To jest dla mnie przykład powieści totalnej, do której mógłbym porównać "Księgi Jakubowe" gdyby do mnie trafiły, tak jak "SLS". Ale nie trafiły. Co w niczym nie zmienia faktu, że delektowałem się każdym słowem.

[Bruce Katz · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his review for the NY Times, Dwight Garner described this book as “unruly, overwhelming, vastly eccentric novel… sophisticated and ribald and brimming with folk wit.” Other reviewers have used words like “monumental,” “immersive,” “visionary,” “epic,” and of course “long.” Nearly 1,000 pages long.

Sounds exactly right, all of it.

“The Books of Jacob” is a challenging book. Let's start with that. The narrative moves primarily forward in time but there are frequent eddies where the story folds back on itself as the omniscient narrator gives way to the musings of one character or another. There are long, difficult to understand passages where characters debate Jewish mysticism, Talmud, God and the messiah, salvation. Sometimes I could follow what was being said, sometimes not. I was confused by peoples’ names and sometimes lost track of who was who. What’s more, the names change. Jacob’s followers must take on Christian names. Shalom Shorr, for example, becomes Franciszek Wolowski. It was often confusing in the moment, but as I read I learned to just let it go and put myself in the author’s hands. Definitely the right choice.

The Jacob in the title was a real person who lived in eighteenth century eastern Europe. Named Jakub Leybowics at birth (the book says at one point he was called Yankiel), he changed his name to Jacob Frank and announced himself to be the messiah. (He will later take on the name Ahmed Frank and, after his baptism in 1759, Joseph.) His fame spread among Jews and non-Jews alike, and he gathered around him a large following of believers that included thousands of Jews who converted at his instruction to Roman Catholicism.

It’s a fascinating tale in its own right -- but in Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s telling, Jacob’s story takes on a depth that transcends its temporal and physical setting. Tellingly, Jacob Frank spreads his message during what we now call the Age of Reason, where old ways of understanding the world clash with the new modes of perception and inquiry. The book makes reference to Mosaic and Christian tradition and kabbalah and alchemy and Baal Shem Tov, but names like Isaac Newton, Denis Diderot, Moses Mendelssohn, Immanuel Kant, Haydn, Mozart pop up, heralds of a new age.

The mysteries confounding humanity before the Age of Reason didn't go away simply because a new age was announcing itself, of course. In the experiences of the book’s many characters we see enacted questions that lie at the heart of all human experience: Why is the world the way it is? If God truly exists and God is good, then why do evil, death, and pain exist? Is there a point to our suffering? Do our questions even have answers? Who and what should we believe? In a very real and important way, “The Books of Jacob” is a chronicle of people struggling with these very questions.

Jacob’s “ministry” itself covers a period of roughly 40 years from the moment he announced himself the Messiah, through his conversion to Islam, then Catholicism (or more accurately, “Catholicism” — like everything else involving Frank, it was eccentric), his 13 year imprisonment, his “Anti-Talmudist” war with traditional Jews, his interactions with bishops, rabbis, rulers, and empresses. One strand even takes us into the twentieth century, to surprising -- even shocking -- effect. There is an objective narrator present here but most of Frank’s story comes to us through the voices of his followers and others with whom he interacts. Tokarczuk explained why she did this in an interview: “I couldn’t understand him. So I decided to present Jacob Frank through the eyes of others, without daring to go too close, though the longer I was involved with him, the more he aroused my sympathy.”

Tokarczuk has created a densely populated world filled with vivid detail about daily life in mid- to late-18th century eastern Europe, about family connections and marriage, about caravans and how people earn their living, about the feel of places, the smell of the air. ("The odor of horse urine and droppings and sweat mixes with the smoke that comes out of the inn’s crooked chimney and bursts out its open door. Two women in red skirts and short sheepskin coats thrown over their white holiday shirts stand at the doorway, carefully examining all who enter…")

We read too of angry, resentment-filled conflicts among Frank’s followers and within families, of Catholic bishops hungry for the acclaim that would come to them from the conversion of thousands of Jews, of traditional Jewish leaders (and parents) incensed by Frank’s apostasy. Of poets and priests and princes. We witness Frank controlling the lives of his followers, forcing husbands and wives to have sex with others, having his followers walk in a circle around a bare-breasted woman. Frank did outrageous things and yet people flocked to him. Why? What did Frank provide them? (Gershom Scholem, the great historian of Jewish messianism, wrote, “Even more than the psychology of the leader, it is the psychology of the led that demands to be understood.” Indeed. In light of the spread of authoritarian governments around the world in recent years, the question of why people will follow certain kinds of charismatic leaders is a pressing one. The question is implicit in Tokarzcuk’s treatment of the Frankists.)

One answer is given by an acolyte who says, “Wherever he shows up, everything takes on a meaning, comes together like it has been tidied up.” Another writes: "There is nothing that brings greater relief than the certainty that there is someone who really knows. For we ordinary people never have such certainty." It's a powerful thing, this "meaning" and "certainty" Frank offered. The novel is set in a very difficult place and time, particularly for Jews. Their relations with Christians are generally calm, but the threat of violence is always there. Accusations of blood libel come up in the book, people are tortured until they confess. There are pogroms, book burnings, rapes. Aristocrats and church officials frequently treat Jews with disdain but rely on and pressure them for money, which of course breeds resentment. And then there are the universal evils of the time: war, poverty, outbreaks of plague that indiscriminately kill thousands, women commonly dying in childbirth, and large numbers of the children dying young.

In short, people are frightened and confused. A character asks: “Why, if God so cherishes us, is there so much suffering in the world? You have only to go so far as the market square in Busk, and your legs will buckle under the weight of all that pain. If He cherishes us so, then why are we not healthy, why are we not preserved from hunger, and not only us—why not others, as well, so that we don’t have to gaze upon illness and death?”

The kabbalistic exercises in the book have this mystery at their hearts. Surely, people think (and hope), there are answers that can be discovered. Perhaps if the Torah is read a certain way, or if hidden numerical connections can be discovered between one word and another. ”The Torah and the world entire are composed of God’s names,” we hear someone say. “Every word is his name, every thing. The Torah is woven from God’s names like a fabric… No one knows which is the thread and which the warp, nor can anyone discern the pattern on the right or its relation to the pattern on the left.” Another character thinks, “…the plaintive rumble of the sea is a lament and that all of nature is taking part in this process of mourning those gods of whom the world has been in such desperate need. There is no one here. God created the world, and the effort of doing so killed him.”

Jacob Frank’s appearance offers people hope, a foundation for their understanding of their place in the world, a promise of redemption. Some believe in him immediately, some come to belief slowly, and others think him a “con man,” as one character says of him. Some think him handsome, others find him ugly, even deformed. He does strange, inexplicable things, and obliges his followers to do likewise. He tells his followers that redemption can only be attained through sin. The old laws of Moses and Christ and Mohamed must be overthrown and replaced. And why should people not believe him? "The refugees, the widows and the agunot [a Jewish woman separated from her husband but unable to get a divorce], the orphaned children, the crippled—all irrefutable proof that the end was on its way and the world would soon give birth to the Messiah, that the birthing pains had already begun.”

Frank is a complicated and not terribly likable person, the author’s “sympathy” notwithstanding. Charismatic but also a bully, flexible in his sexual appetites. He’s manipulative, hot-tempered, even abusive. And yet people are drawn to him. They believe outrageous things about him: He can heal the sick and impregnate a woman just by brushing his finger against her. He has two penises, or at least he does when he wants to. And it appears, astonishingly, he truly can perform magic.

If I were to go on (as I'm obviously doing) I’d talk about the women in the book, the powerful and important roles they play, of Madonna and Shekinah, seer and mother and daughter, of Yente (Jacob's grandmother) who “sees all” and is kept from dying by some kind of hastily performed magical intervention. I’d talk about and share the gorgeous and evocative language that comes when human voices grow silent. (“Wind is the vision of the dead as they gaze upon the world from where they are.”) About the tension between those who want to believe that the world makes sense, and those who dismiss such ways of thinking as delusional. One character — a doctor — thinks, “Most people are truly idiots and… it is human stupidity that is ultimately responsible for introducing sadness into the world.” And about the abundant, often ribald, humor throughout the book.

There is one more passage I’ll share. Jacob’s followers -- after living for years as persecuted outsiders, as Jews in a Catholic realm, which is to say as less than a true "person" --are uncertain about what conversion to Christianity will mean to them. They feel a measure of guilt, like they are betraying themselves, some important part of who they are. Tokarczuk describes their conflicted feelings with poignant sensitivity: “Late at night, yet another aspect of the idea, which they hadn’t really taken into consideration before, occurs to them—that once they are baptized, they will cease to be Jews, at least as far as anyone can tell. They will become people—Christians. They will be able to purchase land, open shops in town, send their children to any schools they wish . . . Their heads spin with possibilities, for it is as though they have suddenly been given a strange, almost inconceivable gift.” Tokarczuk is not Jewish, so one of the questions I ponder is why she chose to write a book about this man, this time, these people. The amount of research she had to do is staggering. It would make for an interesting discussion, but at 1,000 pages I don't see "The Books of Jacob" being chosen by many (any) book groups.

“The Books of Jacob” demands thought, attention, patience, and most of all, a willingness to believe that questions are as, if not more, important than answers. The reader will finish the book, think about it, and flip idly through the pages. Doing so, something will catch their attention, something they didn't see before, and they'll feel an urge to read it again.

Postscript: Shortly after “The Books of Jacob” was first published, the author received death threats from Polish nationalists because in an interview she criticized the country’s refusal to discuss the darker elements of its past. It's a sensitive topic there, not unlike heated arguments over race and slavery in the US. In 2018, Poland passed a law making assertions of Polish complicity in the Holocaust a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. After international criticism, the law was amended to remove the threat of prison. Subsequently, the prime ministers of Poland and Israel issued a joint statement that made a distinction between the actions of individual Poles and the Polish state, saying, "We acknowledge and condemn every single case of cruelty against Jews perpetrated by Poles during the World War II." Interviews of the author and other interesting pieces are available online. I recommend three in particular: Jasmine Liu's article in The Chicago Review of Books (2/28/2022), the interview in The Yale Review (1/31/2022), and "How I Wrote The Books of Jacob" in The Calvert Journal (01/19/2022).

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boeken als deze vragen een andere maatstaf of benadering om er iets over te schrijven. Dat is mijn eerste overweging na deze intense, leerrijke leeservaring. Na drie romans en één essay-verzameling wist Olga Tokarczuk mij te overtuigen van haar originele talent en haar feministische, terug-naar-de-natuur talende literaire engagement. Met dit magnum opus voegt ze daar ook een erudiet en overdonderend historische bewustzijn aan toe, waarin haar verbeeldingskracht op een heel andere, dienende wijze laat zien waarom ze, ik zeg maar wat, de Nobelprijs voor literatuur verdiende.

Minder expliciet, maar misschien wel overweldigender dan met Empusion: Een natuurgeneeskundig griezelverhaal voelde ik de geest van Thomas Mann doorheen deze kronieken waren, samen met een vleugje Umberto Eco, die ik in mijn prille literaire ontdekingsjaren (zo'n dertig jaar geleden) graag las en wiens De slinger van Foucault ik door het lezen van 'De Jacobsboeken' nu wel eens zou willen herontdekken. Historische fictie trok me toen meer aan dan nu, maar telkens als ik me er weer eens aan waag, moet ik toegeven dat ik onder de indruk ben van de schrijverskwaliteiten die daarvoor nodig zijn.

Olga Tokarczuk leeft zich diepgravend uit in deze uitputtende geschiedenis, de rise-and-fall van een joodse sekte die zich in de loop van de achttiende eeuw in en rond haar moederland Polen ontwikkelde vanuit een kabbalistische traditie. Tegen de leer van rabbijnen en talmoedisten in, met als spil hun charismatische, opportunistische, ongrijpbare 'messias' Jacob Frank, ontwikkelden ze behalve hun eigen rituelen en teksten en hun door inteelt in stand gehouden kern, vooral een zelfbedruipend systeem om zich buiten de wetten van de wereld te plaatsen. Dat systeem is nietsontziend en het ultieme verre land waar ze hun eigen enclave zouden kunnen stichten wordt nooit verwezenlijkt.

Inhoudelijk lijkt dat geen 900 pagina's waard, maar dat is zonder Tokarczuk's kwaliteiten gerekend. Toegegeven, echt meeslepen doet ze niet, maar ze verveelt zo goed als geen seconde. Ten eerste vindt ze de passende taal (die even meesterlijk vertaald werd door Karol Lesman) om zowel de tijdsgeest als de esoterische en religieuze thematiek te benaderen. Ten tweede geeft ze iedereen een stem; mannen en (zoals altijd sterke) vrouwen, geprivilegieerden en arme drommels, denkers, dromers en doeners, realisten en melancholici. De veelheid aan personages die dan ook nog eens van naam wisselen, maakt het zeker niet overzichtelijk, maar de auteur doseert en weet precies waar ze welke informatie dient mee te geven om haar lezers bij de les te houden. Tenslotte is er de grenzeloze, overtuigende verbeelding waarmee ze de historische feiten tot verhalen en levens van vlees en bloed metamorfoseert. In haar korte nawoord gunt ze ons daar een exemplarisch inkijkje in. Heerlijk.

Kortom: wellicht de indrukwekkendste Tokarczuk, maar voor mij zeker niet haar beste roman. Daarvoor las het logischerwijze te veel als een historisch werk. Maar dan wel eentje dat, zoals gezegd, zelden verveelt, niettegenstaande de hoeveelheid (aftellende) pagina's.

[Bjorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. Possibly longer review to come. Tokarczuk goes into more detail than you knew you wanted to know about 18th century Poland, lecturing with the light touch of Eco while occasionally going full Pynchon on us with all the interweaving characters, ideas and (of course) songs. There's a lot of weight in this, and not just physically, but she never makes any parallels or metaphors too overbearing, letting the reader choose how deeply they want to delve into what it all means.

He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy.

Then again, what is the messiah but a naughty boy?

Good interview with Tokarczuk here.

[Harun Ahmed · Rating 5 out of 5]

ওলগা তোকারচুকের এ উপন্যাসের আয়তন ও বিষয়বস্তু ভয় পাইয়ে দেওয়ার মতো। বিশাল, মহাকাব্যিক বিস্তৃতিসম্পন্ন "দ্য বুকস অভ জ্যাকব"  আবর্তিত হয়েছে আঠারো শতকের কথিত  পোলিশ  Messiah বা ত্রাণকর্তা জ্যাকব ফ্র‍্যাঙ্ককে ঘিরে।

আধ্যাত্মবাদী কাব্বালিস্ট আর সাব্বাতিয়ানদের ধারায় জ্যাকবের ধর্মীয় আন্দোলন frankist movement বা ফ্রাঙ্কিজম নামে পরিচিত। আগের জন্মে তিনি ধর্মগুরু সাব্বাতাই জেভি ছিলেন বলে দাবি করতেন। ফ্রাঙ্কিস্টদের কার্যকলাপ সে সময়ের কঠোর ধর্মীয় পরিবেশে তুমুল আলোড়ন ও কুৎসার সূচনা করে। দলবদ্ধভাবে যৌনমিলন বা অজাচারকে উৎসাহ দেওয়ার অভিযোগ আছে তাদের বিরুদ্ধে। গল্প শুরু হয় ১৭৫২ সালে রোহুটিন থেকে।  বারবার  ধর্ম ও শহর পরিবর্তন, ইহুদি থেকে মুসলিম - তারপর ক্যাথলিক হওয়া, গ্রেফতার, কারাভোগ, মুক্তি, মৃত্যু - খুবই নাটকীয় জীবন ছিলো জ্যাকবের। তোকারচুকের প্রথম কৃতিত্ব, বাস্তবের মতোই জ্যাকবকে রহস্যাবৃত রাখা। বহু মানুষের দৃষ্টিকোণ থেকে তাকে বা তার চরিত্রের একটা অংশকে আমরা দেখি। কিন্তু তিনি ভণ্ড ছিলেন না সাধু, সে বিষয়ে লেখিকা নির্বিকারত্ব বজায় রেখেছেন। সেই সময়ের পোল্যান্ড ছিলো বহু ধর্ম ও সংস্কৃতির সমষ্টি। বর্তমান ডানপন্থীদের দাবি, তাদের দেশে সবার ধর্ম আর সংস্কৃতিই ছিল এক। বহুত্বকে এরা স্বীকার করে না। ৭ বছর পরিশ্রম করে ওলগা'র তুলে আনা ইতিহাস তাই তাদের কাছে এক ধরনের অপরাধ।

 জ্যাকবের হাত ধরে লেখিকা আঠারো শতকের ইউরোপের রাজনৈতিক, ধর্মীয়, সাংস্কৃতিক পরিমণ্ডলের অবস্থা, বিবর্তন, পরিবর্তন প্রভৃতি তুলে ধরেছেন। জ্যাকবের শিষ্য, নেতৃস্থানীয় ধর্মগুরু, ডাক্তার, কবি, রাজনীতিবিদ প্রভৃতির চিঠি, পাণ্ডুলিপি, কথোপকথনের মাধ্যমে বিচিত্র সব চিন্তাধারার পরিচয় আমরা পাই। এর মধ্যে লেখিকার কণ্ঠস্বর সম্ভবত নাহমান। 

নাহমান জ্যাকবের অনুগত, আজীবনের সঙ্গী। তার জীবনদর্শনকে আমরা লেখিকার মতামত বলে ধরে নিতে পারি। মহাভারতের যুধিষ্ঠির অন্য বীরদের তুলনায় ম্লান, কুণ্ঠিত ও নিচু। কিন্তু একটু একটু করে বিভিন্ন বিরূপ পরিস্থিতিতে পড়ে জীবন সম্বন্ধে যুধিষ্ঠির যে জ্ঞান ও প্রাজ্ঞতা লাভ করে, তাই মহাভারতের অন্যতম গুরুত্বপূর্ণ সারাৎসার। নাহমানের হাত ধরেও এখানে আমরা সন্দেহ, অবিশ্বাস, আনুগত্য ও আধ্যাত্মিকতার এক যুগলবন্দী পাই।সে জানে,  জ্যাকবকে নিচু হতে হবে, পতিত হতে হবে।কারণ মেসাইয়াহকে জগতের সব পাপের ভার বহন করতে হয়। সবার নিচে না পড়লে তার শিক্ষা সম্পূর্ণ হবে না। যে সারাক্ষণ নিজেকে নিয়েই ভাবে তার মধ্যে ঈশ্বর থাকেন না। ধর্ম, আইন, বই, প্রথাকে অন্ধভাবে আঁকড়ে ধরে থাকলে ধ্বংস অনিবার্য, তাই সত্যিকারের ত্রাণকর্তা তিনিই হবেন যিনি জীবনকে ভালোবাসবেন; মৃত্যুকে অবজ্ঞা কোরে।
উপন্যাসে কাল হিসেবে উপস্থিত আছেন yente যার মৃত্যু নেই। শুরু থেকে শেষ পর্যন্ত প্রায় দুইশো বছর ধরে সে দেখে যায় শুধু। তার কাছে চূড়ান্তভাবে ধর্ম হচ্ছে মৃতদের প্রতি বিশ্বাস আর তাদের পৃথিবীকে ঠিক করার অসম্পূর্ণ, অপূর্ণ, ব্যর্থ অথবা শূন্যগর্ভ প্রচেষ্টা। অর্থাৎ মানুষের শ্রেয়বোধ ও সম্মিলিত অবদানকেই লেখিকা সভ্যতার ধারক হিসেবে চিহ্নিত করছেন।

যেতে যেতে উপন্যাসে বর্ণিত একটি প্রাচীন গান পড়া যেতে পারে -

"What is man? A spark.
What is human life? A moment.
What is the future now?
A spark. And the crazed course of time? A moment.
Where does man come from?
A spark. And what is death? A moment.
Who was He while he contained the world?
A spark? And what will he be once he swallows up the world again?
A moment."

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tokarczuk’s magnum opus delves into the swirling vortex of religion and politics present in 18th century Eastern Europe through the life of the self-proclaimed messiah, Jacob Frank. Tokarczuk stays close to the historical record, but includes fictionalized gospels and even a bit of magical realism through the spirit of Yente (Frank’s grandmother) who watches events from on high.

o The Book of Fog—Tokarczuk introduces her main characters, including Father Benedykt Chmielowski, the dean of Rohatyn and author of New Athens, the first Polish encyclopedia; and the Shorrs of Rohatyn, a Jewish family with Sabbatean links. [Sabbatai Zvi, was a self-proclaimed messiah in Jewish history that was tried for sedition by the Ottoman sultan in 1666.]
o The Book of Sand recounts the young life of Jacob Frank as told by Nahman Samuel Ben Levi.
o The Book of the Road records Frank’s conflict with the local Jewish community that is litigated in front of the local bishop, who decides in favor of the Frankists. The charismatic Jacob Frank creates an utopian community that reminded me of a ‘Hippie Commune’.
o The Book of the Comet follows the conversion of Frank to Catholicism. He is eventually arrested and convicted of heresy.
o The Book of Metal & Sulphur—Jacob is released from prison when the Russians take over the city.
o The Book of the Distant Country records the frequent travels of Jacob Frank, including visits to Vienna where his daughter becomes the mistress of the emperor.
o The Book of Names relates what happens to his key followers and members of his family.

This narrative nonfiction account was a tremendous undertaking by Tokarczuk and was key to her receiving the Nobel Award for Literature in 2019. It is both brilliant and overwhelming.

[Titi Coolda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Monumentală cartea Olgăi Tokarczuk. Din toate punctele de vedere. Așa văd eu adevăratul roman istoric. Documentat la modul academic dar scris pentru a fi citit mai ales de profani, în stilul în care-o face autoarea, în stilul cu care m-a cucerit și Cromwell-ul lui Hilary Mantel. O frescă a secolului al XVIII-lea a Europei dar minuțioasă pentru acea parte care acoperă Polonia, Ucraina, Bielorusia de azi, acel tărâm vast, plin de povești și magie, numit Yidishland. Dincolo de povestea lui Frank și a frankismului este exhaustivă zestrea etnologică pe care ne-o relevă scriitura, istoria și vița cotidiană pe care o recompune cu acuratețe în cele mai filigranate detalii. Nu e o carte de aventuri, nici o lectură de relaxare, abundența personajelor, multitudinea numelor , a toponimelor a locurilor și limbilor prin care se perindă acestea, presupune oarecare concentrare și atenție, dar, în rest, capitolele scurte, secvențiale conferă un ritm antrenant lecturii și o poftă insațiabilă de citit.

[Emily Coffee and Commentary · Rating 3 out of 5]

A colossal work that chronicles the controversial life and legacy of religious leader Jacob Frank. All encompassing, poetic, and candid, the Books of Jacob holds nothing back regarding the powerful phenomenon of religious fervor, mass idealism, and cult like communities. This novel illuminates the vastly complicated Jacob Frank, as well as his closest followers and adversaries, which exemplifies how one persons charisma and ideas can alter an entire community’s way of thinking. A tour de force of research and speculation, expertly blending fact and fiction to give new life to a lesser know historical figure that to this day is mysterious and magnetic.

[Elle]

I was so desperate to read this right up til all 1000 pages of it showed up at my house ☠️


*Thanks to Riverhead Books for a finished copy!

[Chris Via]

Video review: https://youtu.be/j1QeLiETWrI