I think this is probably the biggest book I have ever read at 893 pages telling the true story of Jacob Frank, a jew in the 1700s, who led people on a path to God through a variety of religions, ending up as a baron.

In 893 pages there is obviously an awful lot more to this story than that but it is based on papers and documents and diagrams that Tokarczuk found through research. Each chapter is told by a different person, although many have more than one chapter and so we get a village or town of voices telling us a story from their points of view.

Floating above the story is Yente, a woman in the state that is between life and death who observes it all throughout time and across space as the story travels through Poland, Ukraine and Turkey often circling round. Tokarczuk has referred to Yente as the fourth or fifth person narrator but I am not convinced. I didn’t feel Yente narrated so much as was a presence and it was all the other voices that told us the story, a couple in particular.

What I did love about the book, though, was the way that Tokarczuk anchored the story in the daily domesticity of life with wonderful descriptions of markets and towns with women who bleed or love or write poetry. This anchoring seems to move us from the macro conversations about God and the pathway to him (!) and the micro of life as it is lived. The cold in the winter in Poland, the heat in Turkey, the use of ‘herbs’ to alter the state of mind and enable us to be nearer to God and Jacob Franks.

In fact Jacob was a thoroughly obnoxious character whose story shows us how myths and legends are built up around leaders until they become the ‘Messiah’. Really what we saw was a con-man making his way, convincing others to follow because he tapped into their fears and leading them on a merry dance from the Jewish religon through Islam into Catholicism. He followed the typical path of a cult leader demanding followers raise money for his lavish lifestyle, demanding young girls for sex, forcing his wife to have sex with other men and insisting that followers marry within their families leading to cousins marry cousins. Tokarczuk refers to Jacob as trying on different shoes along the path to God but I didn’t feel that he was driven by a desire to know God although others were.

After 800+ pages you start to wonder how the book will end. Not with the death of Jacob because that happens a bit earlier, and here I think Tokarczuk has created a brilliant way to bring threads together. She has Yente look into the future and see the links with the past and the present, including the author writing the book. It really is a masterpiece.

I read this book as part of a slow read with Jeff Rich on Substack and that allowed me time to reflect on each section but I really do need to read the book again. Perhaps a little break first.