This book was a major factor in the author being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. It is long and not an easy read but well worth the effort. Through contemporaneous vignettes, we are told the story of Jacob Frank, a historical messianic figure from 18th-century Poland, who encouraged his Jewish followers to convert to Catholicism. We see events unfolding from many different viewpoints, including his followers, his grandmother who sees all and cannot die after swallowing an amulet, a Catholic priest writing a history of everything, and an omniscient narrator. Set in the broader context of antisemitism in Poland during the 18th century, we follow the movement of Jacob Frank's followers, who consider themselves "anti-Talmudists" and lean on the mystical learnings of the Kabbalah, and their conflict with the traditional Jewish community.Publisher's description:
In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas--and a 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.