Book Review: THE BOOKS OF JACOB by Olga Tokarczuk

The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"For is it not so that our stories are told to us by others? We can know ourselves to the extent that others tell us who we are and what it is we're struggling to do."

Tokarczuk set out to tell the story of a failed Messiah (the historical figure Jacob Frank), whose radical view of Judaism made him undergo multiple conversions (as a Muslim, then as a Catholic) to pursue a greater truth, and who managed to amass an army of converts along the way. Jacob Frank may very well have started out being a pioneer in syncretism, or the combining of different paths to God, before being overcome by success and ordering his followers to do acts not fit for social media (but are written of as sins in our very own Old Testament).

The story is simple enough. The story behind the book's creation, and the continuing story of the immense backlash against its author, shows how its theme of truth-telling versus accepted prepackaged history still speaks intimately to Catholic Poland.

One comes away with the book greatly impressed by the author's act of Tikkun: any act for "the repair of the world, mending the holes in its fabric."

Reading this book made me reflect on the disorganized state of organized religion in my own country, where more than one person claims to be the son or prophet of God. This book makes its readers reflect: how can a messiah be considered "false?" Why do people long for a savior, be it in the religious or political sphere? It also suggests how ridiculous all religious conflicts can be, when analyzed in full light: wars fought over matters of semantics or poor translations. The peace and glory of God overshadowed by the petty pride of man.

"The Messiah is something more than a figure and a person -- it is the dearest and most precious human thought: that salvation exists."

The book's length may have been "necessary" in order to drive home the point that, like any other great faith's Great Book, organized religion is historically a group of texts carefully selected by men to promote their vision of what brings light to the world. But as a reader... I have to say, the length sucked. Haha!

It was just sooooooo loooooooong, around 900 pages! Also, the pages are numbered backwards. The numbered pages start at page 892 and end on page 27. The author said this is to emphasize how "every order, every system, is simply a matter of what you've got used to." It's also a tribute to how Hebrew is written.

To be brutally honest... had circumstances not forced me to be imprisoned in one room for the week it took to get through this mountain of a book, this would probably have suffered the fate of other DNF books (Don't worry, the quarantine wasn't due to COVID! But workers came to the house for badly-needed renovations).

But now that I'VE SURVIVED... I'm glad. This book is an unforgettable experience.

"The world itself demands to be narrated, and only then does it truly exist, only then can it flourish fully. But also that by telling the story of the world, we are changing the world."

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