Flights

Literature & Fiction

OLGA TOKARCZUK

Literary

Riverhead Books

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: A Novel

The Books of Jacob: A Novel

The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

Genre Fiction

Fitzcarraldo Editions

Product Description In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas 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, 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 rumours of his sect's secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs. In The Books of Jacob, her masterpiece, 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Olga Tokarczuk writes the story of Frank through the perspectives of his contemporaries, capturing Enlightenment Europe on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence. Review '"The Books of Jacob" is an unruly, overwhelming, vastly eccentric novel. It's sophisticated and ribald and brimming with folk wit. It treats everything it bumps into at both face value and ad absurdum. It's Chaucerian in its brio...This novel's density is saturnalian; its satire nimble; academics will tug at its themes, as if they were pinworms, for decades.' -- Dwight Garner, New York Times '[A] visionary novel ... Tokarczuk is wrestling with the biggest philosophical themes: the purpose of life on earth, the nature of religion, the possibility of redemption, the fraught and terrible history of eastern European Jewry. With its formidable insistence on rendering an alien world with as much detail as possible, the novel reminded me at times of Paradise Lost. The vividness with which it's done is amazing. At a micro-level, she sees things with a poetic freshness.... The Books of Jacob, which is so demanding and yet has so much to say about the issues that rack our times, will be a landmark in the life of any reader with the appetite to tackle it.' -- Marcel Theroux, Guardian'A magnificent writer.' -- Svetlana Alexievich, 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate'A writer on the level of W. G. Sebald.' -- Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News 'In Tokarczuk's telling this epic of myth and history is a celebration of cultural diversity, a plea for tolerance and - notwithstanding its impeccably researched historical setting - a contemporary story of borders, refugees and migration. Despite the novel's great length, the world she has recreated is wrenching to leave.... Huge credit must be given to Croft, whose magnificent, lively translation is also a work of pure scholarship: the multiple voices, styles, landscapes and inventories she renders into English bring this lost world vividly to life.... As a reading experience, aspects of Tolstoy's War and Peace are an obvious comparison; but so too is The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald's epic in miniature of German Romanticism, and Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy: all immersive works in which the act of turning the pages is akin to surrender.' -- Catherine Taylor, Prospect'Tokarczuk shows impressive skill in recreating an entire era and world, which ranges from Poland to Smyrna and Vienna. Yet her real genius lies in the cast of characters she has conjured up; dozens, each fully realised, from an emperor downwards.... She is also ambitious in her willingness to ask (and sometimes answer) extraordinarily large questions through these character studies.... Holding it all together for 900 pages is incredible, but that is not what makes this book great. Tokarczuk, unafraid and ambitious, creates a very fallible messiah, yet makes it seem reasonable and human to believe in his divinity. That is a kind of literary miracle.' -- Antonia Senior, The Times About the Author Olga Tokarczuk is the

The Books of Jacob

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

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Penguin India

With DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD, Man Booker International Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk returns with a subversive, entertaining noir novel. In a remote Polish village, Janina Duszejko, an eccentric woman in her sixties, recounts the events surrounding the disappearance of her two dogs. She is reclusive, preferring the company of animals to people; she's unconventional, believing in the stars; and she is fond of the poetry of William Blake, from whose work the title of the book is taken. When members of a local hunting club are found murdered, Duszejko becomes involved in the investigation. By no means a conventional crime story, this existential thriller by `one of Europe's major humanist writers' (GUARDIAN) offers thought-provoking ideas on our perceptions of madness, injustice against marginalized people, animal rights, the hypocrisy of traditional religion, belief in predestination - and caused a genuine political uproar in Tokarczuk's native Poland.

Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead

Contemporary

As new ideas-and a new unrest-begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a spell that attracts a fervent following. 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 rumours of his sect's secret rituals and the spread of his iconoclastic beliefs.\nThe story of Frank-a real historical figure, a divisive yet charismatic man-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.

Text Publishing

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Books by OLGA TOKARCZUK