At the center of her mishpacha is her grandson, Jacob Frank. It is from Yente’s omniscient perspective that we view the devastating poverty, antisemitic persecution and cabalistic yearning for the world beyond that helped render all too appealing-and ultimately appalling-Frank’s transgressive allure. The amulet had been swallowed by an elderly Jewish women named Yente, who spends the duration of the book in a mystical all-seeing state, hovering over and sometimes commenting on the messianic quests of the different members of her extended family.

The Books of Jacob, first published in Poland in 2014, begins in 1752 in the town of Rohatyn-in what was then Poland but is today Ukraine-with a magic spell cast from an amulet. In her strangely immersive historical epic The Books of Jacob, Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk, a Polish-born Catholic turned atheist, dramatizes a slice of Jewish history you almost certainly never learned about in Hebrew school: the true story of the infamous false messiah Jacob Frank (1726-1791). At close to 1,000 pages and divided into seven “books,” this deeply researched tome is fascinating, but not for the faint of heart. Nevertheless, its portrait of a society in upheaval-shown through the eyes of an expansive network of characters-has the power to both enlighten and unnerve, especially in its eerie reflection of the rampant prejudices and inequalities that roil our world today.

Translated by Jennifer Croft (Riverhead Books)

Tokarczuk the books of jacob