The Books of Jacob

The Vicar Forane Benedykt Chmielowski writes to El?bieta Dru?backa

Of the unexpected guest who comes in the night to Father Chmielowski

Of the cave in the shape of the alef


17.

Scraps: My heart’s quandary

How in Giurgiu we talked Jacob into returning to Poland

Father Benedykt weeds the oregano

The runaway

The runaway’s tale: Jewish purgatory

Cousins putting up a unified front and launching their campaign

Moliwda sets out and beholds the kingdom of the vagabonds

How Moliwda is made messenger in the service of a difficult cause

Of useful truths and useless truths, and the mortar post as a means of communication

Mrs. Kossakowska, wife of the castellan of Kamieniec, writes to Senator ?ubieński, Bishop of Lwów

Father Pikulski writes to Senator ?ubieński, Bishop of Lwów

From Antoni Moliwda-Kossakowski to His Excellency Bishop ?ubieński

Knives and forks


18.

Of how Ivanie, a little village on the Dniester, becomes a republic

Of the sleeves of Sabbatai Tzvi’s holy shirt

Of the working of Jacob’s touch

Of the women’s talk while plucking chickens

Of which of the women will be chosen

Hana’s gloomy gaze notes these details of Ivanie

Of Moliwda’s visit to Ivanie

Divine grace, which calls out from the darkness into the light

The supplication to Archbishop ?ubieński

Of the everlasting interconnectedness between divinity and sinfulness

Of God

“The miller grinds the flower”



IV. THE BOOK OF THE COMET




19.

Of the comet that augurs the end of the world and brings about the Shekhinah

Of Yankiel of Glinno and the terrible smell of silt

Of Strange Deeds, holy silence, and other Ivanie diversions

A tale of two tablets

Scraps, or: Eight months in the Lord’s community of Ivanie

Of doubles, trinities, and foursomes

Of candles put out

A man who does not have a piece of land is not a man

Of stablehands and the study of the Polish language

Of new name

Of Pinkas, who descends into hell in search of his daughter

Antoni Moliwda-Kossakowski writes to Katarzyna Kossakowska

Katarzyna Kossakowska to Antoni Moliwda-Kossakowski

Of the cross and dancing in the abyss


20.

What Yente sees from the vault of Lwów cathedral on July 17, 1759

Of Asher’s familial bliss

The seventh point of the disputation

Of secret hand and eye signals and hints

Katarzyna Kossakowska writes to Bishop Kajetan So?tyk

Of the troubles of Father Chmielowski

Of Pinkas, who cannot understand what sin he has committed

Of the human deluge that overwhelms the streets of Lwów

The Mayorkowiczes

Nahman and his raiment of good deeds

Father Mikulski’s bills and the market of Christian names

Of what happens to Father Chmielowski in Lwów

At the printing press of Pawe? Józef Golczewski, His Majesty the King’s preferred typographer

Of proper proportions

The baptism

Of Jacob Frank’s shaved beard, and the new face that emerges from underneath it


21.

Of the plague that descends upon Lwów in the autumn of 1759

What Moliwda writes to his cousin Katarzyna Kossakowska

In which Katarzyna Kossakowska dares to disturb the powerful of this world

Of the trampling of coins and using a knife to make a V formation of cranes make a U-turn

Scraps: At Radziwi??’s

Of sad turns in Lublin


22.

The inn on the right bank of the Vistula

Of events in Warsaw and the papal nuncio

Of Katarzyna and her dominion over Warsaw

Katarzyna Kossakowska writes to her cousin

What is served for Christmas Eve dinner at Mrs. Kossakowska’s

Avacha and her two dolls

A doll for Salusia ?ab?cka, and Father Chmielowski’s tales of a library and a ceremonious baptism

Father Gaudenty Pikulski, a Bernardine, interrogates the naive

Father Gaudenty Pikulski writes to Primate ?ubieński

The cornflower-blue ?upan and the red kontusz

What was going on in Warsaw when Jacob disappeared

Spit on this fire

An ocean of questions that will sink even the strongest battleship


23.

What hunting is like at Hieronim Florian Radziwi??’s

Scraps: Of the three paths of the story and how telling a tale can be its own deed

Hana, consider in your heart



V. THE BOOK OF METAL AND SULFUR




24.

The messianic machine, how it works

Of Jacob’s arrival, on a February night in 1760, in Cz?stochowa

What Jacob’s prison is like

The flagellants

The holy picture that conceals without revealing

A letter in Polish

A visit to the monastery

Upupa dicit

Of Jacob’s learning to read and where the Poles come from

Of Jan Wo?owski and Mateusz Matuszewski, who are the next to come to Cz?stochowa, in November of 1760

El?bieta Dru?backa to Father Benedykt Chmielowski, Vicar Forane of Rohatyn, Tarnów, Christmas, 1760

El?bieta Dru?backa’s heavy golden heart offered to the Black Madonna


25.

Yente sleeping under stork wings

Of Yente’s measurement of graves

A letter from Nahman Jakubowski to the Lord in Cz?stochowa

Gifts from the Besht

The larch manor in Wojs?awice and Zwierzchowski’s teeth

Of torture and curses

How Hayah prophesies

Edom is shaken to its foundations

Of how the interregnum translates into the traffic patterns of the carriages on Krakowskie Przedmie?cie

Pinkas edits the Documenta Judaeos

Who Pinkas runs into at the market in Lwów

A mirror and ordinary glass

Daily life in prison and of keeping children in a box

The hole that leads to the abyss, or a visit from Tovah and his son Hayim Turk in 1765

El?bieta Dru?backa writes from the Bernardine monastery in Tarnów a last letter to the canon Benedykt Chmielowski in Firlejów

Of bringing Moliwda back to life

Of wandering caves

Of failed legations and history laying siege to the monastery walls

Of the passing of Lady Hana in February of 1770 and of her final resting place

Scraps: Being under siege



VI. THE BOOK OF THE DISTANT COUNTRY




26.

Yente reads passports

Of the Dobrushka family in Prossnitz

Of new life in Brünn and the ticking of clocks

Of Moshe Dobrushka and the feast of the Leviathan

Of the house by the cathedral and the delivery of maiden

Scraps: How to catch a fish in muddied water

The Lord’s words

The bird that hops out of a snuffbox

A thousand compliments, or: Of the wedding of Moshe Dobrushka, or Thomas von Sch?nfeld

Of the emperor and people from everywhere and nowhere

Of the bear from Avacha Frank’s dream

Of the high life

A machine that plays chess


27.

How Nahman Piotr Jakubowski is appointed an ambassador

The return of Bishop So?tyk

What’s happening among the Lord’s Warsaw machna

Eine Anzeige, or: A denunciation

Coffee with milk: The effects of consumption

A hernia, and the Lord’s words

Of a proclivity for secret experiments on substances

Every variety of ash, or: Recipes for homemade gold

How the Lord’s dreams see the world

Of the lovemaking of Franciszek Wo?owski

Of Samuel Ascherbach, son of Gitla and Asher


28.

Olga Tokarczuk's books