This event will take place virtually on Zoom on Saturday, February 19 at 1 PM. Click here to register.

Join the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith, Community Bookstore, and Third Place Books for a virtual event with author Olga Tokarczuk and translator Jennifer Croft to discuss and celebrate the release of the sweeping and ambitious novel The Books of Jacob. They will be in conversation with writer Rabih Alameddine.

In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas—and new unrest—begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself, again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect’s secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs. The story of Frank—a real historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day—is the perfect canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. Narrated through the perspectives of his contemporaries—those who revere him, those who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who sees him for what he is—The Books of Jacob captures a world on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence.

Olga Tokarczuk is one of Poland’s most celebrated and beloved authors, a winner of the Nobel Prize and the Booker International Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award in Translation, as well as a repeat recipient of her country’s highest literary honor, the Nike. She is the author of a dozen works of fiction, two collections of essays, and a children’s book; her work has been translated into fifty languages.

Jennifer Croft won the 2020 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for her illustrated memoir, Homesick, and was co-awarded the 2018 Booker International Prize for her translation of Flights. She is also the recipient of Cullman, Fulbright, PEN, MacDowell and NEA grants and fellowships, the inaugural Michael Henry Heim Prize for Translation, and the 2018 Found in Translation Award. She holds a PhD from Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The New York TimesGranta, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New Republic, the Guardian, and elsewhere.

Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels The Angel of HistoryAn Unnecessary WomanThe HakawatiI, the DivineKoolaids; and the story collection, The Perv. In 2019, he won the Dos Passos Prize. He tweets at @rabihalameddine.

About Our Bookstore Partners

Community Bookstore, celebrating over 50 years in Park Slope, is Brooklyn’s oldest operating bookstore.

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle’s Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/event.