Olga Tokarczuk’s “The Books of Jacob” is a wild, unruly saga

The Books of Jacob. By Olga Tokarczuk. Translated by Jennifer Croft. Riverhead Books; 992 pages; $35. Fitzcarraldo Editions; £20

THE NOVEL that earned Olga Tokarczuk the Nobel prize in literature for 2018, now published in English, is a wild, unruly beast—not just because it is more than 900 pages long. Divided into seven books, it begins one foggy morning in October 1752.

Horsemen, merchants, peasants and priests jostle along a muddy road in central Poland on their way to market. The air is scented with the sweet smell of malt from nearby breweries. Vodka and mead are also on offer, Ms Tokarczuk writes, as well as wine from Hungary and the Rhineland. The fog is so dense, though, that the crowd can only navigate by the burble of a river, a metaphor for readers who will also find themselves, as the Polish author says, on a “fantastic journey across seven borders, five languages and three major religions, not counting the minor sects”.

At the centre of “The Books of Jacob” is a large group of Jews from Podolia, in what is now south-western Ukraine, adherents of a real-life Kabbalist rabbi and self-proclaimed Messiah called Sabbatai Tzvi. In the mid-18th century they become followers of his heir, Jacob Frank, also based on a real figure (pictured), a tall, charismatic merchant who...