<i>The Books of Jacob</i> [Księgi Jakubowe]

In today's world, where the majority of people have a reading attention span limited to what fits the screen of their smartphone, presenting a novel of nearly 1,000 pages might seem surprising, to say the least. Moreover, with digital versions of books gaining an ever larger share of the publishing market, a novel that, because of its graphic elements, best reads as a printed version, rather seems to ignore the realities of the contemporary readers’ market as well as the needs of the reading public. Though there is still a considerable number of novels available primarily in paper copies, many of them fall into the category of so-called airport fiction, books that are bought for travel and left in book exchanges or disposed of after a traveller's arrival. The Books of Jacob, a novel by the winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, Olga Tokarczuk, is too long for even the longest flights, and too large and heavy to carry around. However, readers who do take the time to read it will carry their thoughts about this novel with them for years. In the end, it is “A Fantastic Journey Across Seven Borders, five languages, and Three Major Religions, not counting minor sects. Told by the Dead, supplemented by the Author, drawing from a range of Books, and aided by the Imagination, the which being the greatest natural Gift of any person. That the Wise might have it for the record, that my compatriots Reflect, laypersons gain some Understanding, and melancholy souls obtain some slight enjoyment,” as the subtitle reads.In her native Poland, Olga Tokarczuk is one of the best known and most popular contemporary writers. Moreover, she has been very prolific, publishing regularly since the 1990s in a variety of forms: novels, short stories, and essays. Two of her novels won the prestigious Nike Award (in 2008, Flights; in 2015, The Books of Jacob) and five received the Audience Awards associated with it (1997: Primeval and Other Times; 1999: House of Day, House of Night; 2002: Playing on Many Drums; 2008: Flights; 2015: The Books of Jacob), among other Polish and European book prizes. Tokarczuk's literary works have been adapted for both the stage and movies, strengthening her presence on the Polish cultural scene. Interestingly, her social activism and literary writings go hand-in-hand in conveying a message regarding the fluidity of gender and the power of social conventions and patriarchal culture. Strong feminist messages in her early works later gained the accompaniment of ecological views, reclaiming the multicultural past of Polish history. Though she debuted as a so-called regional writer, focusing on Silesia, the southwestern part of Poland along with its borderland (Polish/German/Czech) status and a territory inhabited by Poles repatriated from the prewar Eastern provinces, her reading audience was not limited to this region. She quite quickly became a writer of a national prominence, in no small part because of her progressive worldviews and writing style.The Books of Jacob appeared in Poland in 2014, before Tokarczuk was awarded the Nobel Prize, but the English translation of the book only reached readers in 2022, when she was already a world-famous author. Working on a book of this scope and size took Tokarczuk a considerable time, and she conducted thorough research in preparing it. The story centers around Jakub Frank, born Jakub Lejbowicz, a self-proclaimed charismatic Jewish messiah and one of the leaders of a heretical religious movement in the second half of the eighteenth century. Excommunicated by Jewish authorities, Frank, together with his followers, converted to Islam, and later, under the influence of Polish Catholic bishops, became baptized and joined the ranks of the nobility. This, however, did not change the fact that Frankists were treated with suspicion due to their doctrines, as well as for breaking the rules of morality and modesty. In her well-researched novel, Tokarczuk shows them as a new sect rather than a group of converts and portrays the life journey of Jakub Frank the writer as a process of the creation of his doctrine alongside his followers’ challenges of assimilation into new religious cultures.The novel, however, is not devoted exclusively to the life and teaching of Jakub Frank, but also describes the political and cultural worlds he operated in. This is a story about the significant changes of eighteenth-century Poland, its multicultural and multi-religious character, and the main literary figures of the times. Elżbieta Drużbacka, the first Polish female poet, and Benedykt Chmielowski, a Polish priest and author of one of the first Polish encyclopedias, Nowe Ateny [New Athens, 1746] are among the most prominent real-life people Tokarczuk has turned into literary characters in her book. Thus, the novel paints a multilayered picture of the changes of traditional society while science came to the fore, challenging both the culture of the people living in Poland and their respective religions, and the religious beliefs evolving under economic and political pressures. The center of this world is not one of the central cities traditionally serving as the political capital of the country, but rather it has shifted to the most multicultural regions of the eastern part of Poland, with Lviv (Lwów in Polish) as the cultural center, and the most multicultural territories as other sites.With very modern as well as untraditional social and political views, including gender fluidity and feminist and ecological ideas all at the very core of Tokarczuk's writings, she treats her medium (the written text) in a rather traditional way. There is a reason why the book reads best in the paper version. She starts The Books of Jacob with a statement about the connection between paper, word, and the body: Once swallowed, the piece of paper lodges in her esophagus, near her heart. Saliva-soaked. The specially prepared black ink dissolves slowly now, the letters losing their shapes. Within the human body, the world splits in two: substance and essence. When the former goes, the latter, formlessly abiding, may be absorbed into the body's tissues, since essays always seek carriers in matter—even if this is to be the cause of many misfortunes. (p. 965)There are also additional reasons that make this novel a challenge to the publisher: traveling requires maps, is connected with images, and also knowledge of different languages, recorded in different alphabets. While in western tradition one reads from left to right, some cultures adopt right to left (or even down from the top) directions. Tokarczuk, similarly to how she did in Flights, uses maps as part of her text, in this novel extending this narrative technique also to drawings and reproductions of old books; what's more, she marks different parts of the book by different styles of letters, leaving her readers with a visual collage. Riverhead Books preserved these features quite well in their edition, though it still falls short of replicating the graphically superb Polish edition by the Krakόw Wydawnictwo Literackie in 2014. It is, however, not only a collage of images, but also, to use the words of Jennifer Croft, the skilful translator of this novel, in polyglot conversation with myriad other texts. It is thanks to this deep understanding of Tokarczuk's writing that her translator was able to transpose it into a beautiful novel that reads notably well in English. Though it appears that English-speaking readers are presented with only a limited number of Tokarczuk's books, and there are only two translators making her books available in English (many fewer than in other languages), it is very fortunate that Jennifer Croft is one of them. The Books of Jacob is not only one of the must-reads of this century, but readers of this impeccable translation are able to enjoy the very depth of the thoughts and the beauty of the language of the Polish original of this novel.

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