000			01962nam a2200193 4500
020			_a0009781910695593
082			_a891.8538 _bOLG/B
100			_aTokarczuk, Olga
245			_aThe books of Jacob
260			_aLondon _bFitzcarraldo _c2014
520			_aThe Nobel Prize-winner's richest, most sweeping and ambitious novel yet follows the comet-like rise and fall of a mysterious, messianic religious leader as he blazes his way across eighteenth-century Europe. In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas -- and a new unrest -- begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect's secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs. The story of Frank -- a real historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day -- is the perfect canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. Narrated through the perspectives of his contemporaries -- those who revere him, those who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who sees him for what he is -- The Books of Jacob captures a world on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence.
650			_aFrank, Jacob, approximately 1726-1791
650			_aEurope
650			_aJews
650			_aPoland
650			_aJewish messianic movements
700			_aJennifer Croft, Tr.
942			_cBK
999			_c66480 _d66480