As the song goes, everybody wants to rule the world. But if you can’t rule the world, how about a small portion of it?
Indeed, cults are on the rise here in North America. The whole Qanon movement has taken a weird turn from being a troll spouting nonsense on a message board to an ex-president spreading lies about an electoral defeat, a so-called Deep State, and attempting to upend democratic norms. Drawing people out of this cycle isn’t as easy as just showing them facts, one has to essentially deprogam them as one would a brainwashed individual. There’s even a subreddit about losing loved ones to this quasi religious, quasi political group.
Regrettably, such groups are not new to American politics: fringe groups have existed in one form or another almost as long as the United States has. And they are not even a specifically American phenomenon. Would be messiahs have existed probably as long as there was a messiah to pretend to be. One such would-be messiah was Jacob Frank, who flourished in Poland during the mid 18th century. He’s the subject of Olga Tokarczuk’s novel The Books of Jacob, which came out in an English translation earlier this year via Riverhead Books.
A huge, sprawling read about a Jewish messianic sect in the late 18th century, The Books of Jacob may not sound like a typical page turner. But it’s an interesting, almost endlessly fascinating book with a huge cast, a timeline that ranges up to modern day and covers nearly all of Eastern Europe. But more than that, it’s also an interesting study in power: how one acquires it and how it corrupts.
It’s hard to explain this complex read in a nutshell, but it more or less follows Jacob Frank, a would-be messiah who roams 18th century Poland and recruits a band of followers. There’s also a cast of priests and bishops, queens and Jewish rabbis, peasantry and court nobles. Frank’s fortunes rise and fall, he’s cast out and cursed and welcomed into the highest circles of European nobility. And through it all, we follow the all-seeing eyes of Yente, a Jewish matriarch who is both dead and undead, existing in a limbo that’s something akin to a fairy tale existence.
Indeed, maybe that’s the best way to explain this novel – forget a literal plot summary, a look at motives and explanations. Instead, think of this as a huge HBO miniseries, a fairy tale for adults that’s draped in religious mysticism and magical realism.
Of course, this is not your typical fairy tale: there are no dashing heroics, no damsels in distress. Instead it’s focused on one man’s quest for immortality and power. Frank is a would-be messiah, someone who holds sway over a small but fanatically devoted group of people. We never exactly see him perform anything like a miracle – indeed, he fails a couple of times – but his believers follow him anyway, shrugging off reports to the contrary. He charms his followers out of their misery, taking them from the lower classes and promising them the moon. He uses his considerable charm and he cultivates an air of mystery. He is dressed in Turkish clothing, surrounds himself with beautiful women.
In Frank’s Poland, Jewish peasants are second-rate citizens and the followers he cultivates from the lower of these ranks: poor tradesmen, for example. They don’t have much to lose, but soon Frank gets them to break with their families, their traditions and even Jewish dietary laws. Before long, he has them converting to Christianity, which puts them further in limbo: they’re ostracized by their peers, but never fully trusted by the Christian Church.
Indeed, the Church looms heavy over all this. There’s local priests, including a would-be author who tries to capture the world around him, to crooked elders, including one who pawns off his vestments to pay a gambling debt. It goes right to the top, too, with specialized forces to combat heresy and control people, forcing them into submission. When Frank tries to leverage his power among the locals, he runs smack into these forces, setting off the book’s final third.
In some ways, the book seems to mirror more contemporary events or at least to have it’s own relevance. A would-be leader who stirs up lower-class folk to do his dirty work while he surrounds himself with opulence and splendid? Seems familiar. But it’s more than just that: it’s a long, compelling story with dozens of characters, told in an interesting style that mixes journals with narration and an omnipresent narrator. It’s translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft, who has worked with Tokarczuk before. I think it shows: her translation is fluid, flowing nicely, and never feels caught up in jargon or trying to find the correct word.
That said, the book is a little long. It feels like it takes a hundred pages or so to really get going and it drags a little in the middle. There’s a couple of subplots that weave their way around the main narrative, adding some contrast to Frank’s journey, but also don’t really add much to it either.
When Tokarczuk won the Nobel prize, the Swedish academy said this was her masterpiece. I don’t know if I’d go quite that far, but this is a novel for one to literally get lost in. It captures it’s world of 18th century Poland well, taking readers deep inside temples and churches, into castles and dungeons and across almost all of Eastern Europe. It’s a compelling read.
