MINDBLOWING BOOK CLUB: The Books of Jacob (2014/2023) by Olga Tokarczuk

Okay, for everyone who has been asking about the + MINDBLOWING BOOK CLUB part of this group's title, here is the first event in the other half of what we do. Every 2.5 months, we'll meet to discuss a mindblowing (and rather long) work of world literature.

(The extra time will be to give folks who are interested time to get a copy and have time to sit with a ~1000 page book.)

First up, the Mindblowing Book Club will be reading THE BOOKS OF JACOB, the magnum opus of Polish author Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature.

FULL TITLE: The books of Jacob or: A fantastic journey across seven borders, five languages, and three major religions, not counting the minor sects. Told by the dead, supplemented by the author, drawing from a range of books, and aided by imagination, the which being the greatest natural gift of any person. That the wise might have it for a record, that my compatriots reflect, laypersons gain some understanding, and melancholy souls obtain some slight enjoyment

LENGTH: 964 pages

SYNOPSIS via Penguin Random House:
The 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.

In a nod to books written in Hebrew, The Books of Jacob is paginated in reverse, beginning on p. 955 and ending on p. 1 – but read traditionally, front cover to back.

BLURBS:
“Just as awe-inspiring as the Nobel judges claimed.” – The Washington Post

“Olga Tokarczuk is one of our greatest living fiction writers. . . This could well be a decade-defining book akin to Bolaño’s 2666.” –AV Club

“Sophisticated and ribald and brimming with folk wit. . . The comedy in this novel blends, as it does in life, with genuine tragedy.” –Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Yes, there’s a miracle in these pages. It’s not about the Virgin Mary or the false Messiah Jacob Frank, however, but the way Tokarczuk can make a period so distant from us in every way feel so completely alive.” —Los Angeles Times

“Tokarczuk aims high, spinning a layered, majestic, polyphonic novel based on a real-life figure. . . . A golden age of historical fiction is upon us: Tokarczuk links arms with Hilary Mantel and Colson Whitehead, connecting our own perilous moment with the past.” —Oprah Daily