Los libros de Jacob

The Nobel Prize winner returns with a total novel about the adventures of Jacob Frank, who proclaimed himself the Messiah in the middle of the Age of Enlightenment. Jacob Frank, the protagonist of this novel, seems, due to his adventures, to be a fictional character that only the mind of a novelist could conceive. However, it turns out that he existed, and his life is historically documented. The Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk starts from the adventures of this real character to build an impetuous, dazzling novel. In the second half of the 18th century, the young Jew Jacob Frank reinvented himself again and again, he toured two empires, that of the Habsburgs and the Ottoman, professed three religions, proclaimed himself the Messiah, angered the authorities, gathered disciples and created a sect that advocated breaking taboos and practiced, according to some rumors, orgiastic rites and bacchanals, he sought spiritual transcendence in the middle of the Age of Enlightenment. , he questioned the established order and was persecuted and accused of being a heretic... With this almost implausible charismatic, crazy, subversive, occult icon, the author constructs an epic, historical, satirical and philosophical novel that travels through Europe to its ends, from the peasant villages to the sophisticated courts. With exquisite prose and a rhythm that gives no respite, Tokarczuk catches the reader in his clutches and does not let go. A total novel, which reconstructs a little-known story from our past to literary address the great issues of our present.