The Books of Jacob

The Books of Jacob is a 2014 novel by Polish author Olga Tokarczuk. The novel tells the fictionalized story of a real Polish Jewish man named Jacob Frank, who claimed to be the Messiah in the 1800s. The many literary prizes won by Tokarczuk include the Polish Nike Award, the Man Booker International Prize, and the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Books of Jacob won the Prix Laure Bataillon (2019) and the Jan Michalski Prize (2018), amongst other honors.

This guide uses the print version of the 2021 Fitzcarraldo edition, translated by Jennifer Croft. This guide also follows the author’s stylistic choice of numbering the pages in reverse, beginning on page 892 and ending on page 27. This decision is intended to echo the pagination and reading styles of texts written in Hebrew.

Content Warning: The source material occasionally deals with issues such as sexual violence, violence, and religious persecution.

Plot Summary

In the Polish town of Rohatyn in 1752, a Christian priest and author named Father Chmielowski visits a Rabbi named Elisha Shorr to borrow a book to aid his composition of an encyclopedia named New Athens. Later, Chmielowski meets Elzbieta Druzbacka, who is traveling with a noblewoman named Katarzyna Kossakowska.