We invite you to read Olga Tokarczuk’s masterpiece, now translated for the first time into English, and attend a worldwide discussion of the book guided by the translator and our distinguished panelists, held on Zoom.
Everybody Reads: "The Books of Jacob" by Olga Tokarczuk - The Sixth Annual Levy Event
About the book and its author:
Poland’s literary star Olga Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2019. This winter her most ambitious novel The Books of Jacob was translated into English, having first appeared in Polish in 2014. This sprawling epic tells the story of Jacob Frank, a real-life messianic figure in eighteenth-century Poland, who led thousands of his Jewish followers into Catholic baptism. The book weaves together the lives of Poles and Jews, women and men, peasants and nobility, priests and rabbis, rulers and visionaries, in an unsettling tapestry of earthy beauty and poignancy. The landscape and history of Ukraine feature vividly in this brilliant narrative.
“The book tells the story of the shared history of the Poles and the Jews.” - Olga Tokarczuk
"What I hope to have generated is microsuspense: the desire to keep reading, the drive to turn the page." - Jennifer Croft, translator of the English edition
Other books by Tokarczuk available in English include Flights, which won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, a collage of meditations on travel, anatomy, and human cruelty; Primeval and Other Times, a magical realist exploration of twentieth century history through a town in Poland, its Christian and Jewish inhabitants, and the angels who witness it; and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, a dark and bloody-minded mystery novel set in the Polish borderlands.
Professor Michael Weingrad serves as moderator and will be joined by a distinguished panel of scholars:
Jennifer Croft is the English-language translator of The Books of Jacob. She won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her translation from Polish of Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights.
Haim Watzman is one of the leading translators of Hebrew works into English. With more than 50 books to his credit, he has worked with many of Israel’s leading authors and scholars. He is also the author of three books and a play.
Bożena Shallcross is an internationally recognized expert in Polish literary studies and Polish Holocaust literature. She is the author and editor of numerous critical studies including The Holocaust Object in Polish and Polish-Jewish Culture.
The Fifth Annual Levy Event is presented by the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at Portland State University with the support of the Lawrence Levy and Pamela Lindholm-Levy Judaic Studies Programming Fund.
Cosponsors:
PSU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
PSU Department of English
Learn more and register:
https://www.pdx.edu/judaic-studies/2022-levy-event