The Books of Jacob

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.

Longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize \ Guardian Best Fiction of 2021 | Times Best Historical Fiction Books 2021 | The Economist Best Books of 2021

Olga Tokarczuk is the author of nine novels, three short story collections and has been translated into more than fifty languages. Her novel Flights won the 2018 International Booker Prize, in Jennifer Croft’s translation. She is the recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Empusium is her fourth novel to appear in English with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Jennifer Croft was awarded the International Booker Prize in 2018 and was a National Book Award Finalist for her translation from Polish of Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights. She is the recipient of Fulbright, PEN, MacDowell, and National Endowment for the Arts grants and fellowships, as well as the inaugural Michael Henry Heim Prize for Translation and a Tin House Workshop Scholarship for her memoir Homesick.