Pre-order Now! The Books of Jacob, by Olga Tokarczuk
From the Nobel Prize winning author of Flights and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead comes her masterpiece, The Books of Jacob. Cited by the Nobel committee in 2018 as one of the most important contemporary works of historical fiction, The Books of Jacob - appearing for the first time in English in an incredible translation by Jennifer Croft - is a kaleidoscopic portrait of one of Poland’s most controversial figures, Jacob Frank, who claimed to be the messiah. Written with Tokarczuk’s trademark psychological precision and lyrical beauty, this is a sweeping, beautiful novel spanning centuries, by one of the world’s most important living authors. Unmissable.
Order your copy today directly through October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get a commission on your purchase.
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
Paperback £20
Available for Pre-Order. Released 15/11/21
In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas 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, 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 rumours of his sect's secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs.
In THE BOOKS OF JACOB, her masterpiece, 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Olga Tokarczuk writes the story of Frank through the perspectives of his contemporaries, capturing Enlightenment Europe on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence.
Order your copy today directly from October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get commission on your purchase.
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