“Flights.”) Frank was an eighteenth-
century Polish Jew who proclaimed
himself as the Messiah. In the seventeen-
fifties, he accumulated thousands of
followers among the Sabbateans, the
messianic Jewish sect to which he
belonged. He incorporated Christian
teachings into Sabbatean Judaism and
conducted mass baptisms. In addition
to doing historical research into the
details of the era, Tokarczuk wanted to
experience the locations herself, she
said: “I am a writer, not a historian, so
I have to touch everything myself—to
smell, to touch, to see.” She observed
plants, leaves, the color of the soil, the
flow of the Dniester River. In Lviv, she
sat in the cathedral to imagine how it
had been when Frank’s followers were
baptized there en masse.
For the better part of a decade, she
immersed herself in every possible sub-
ject related to Frank: Poland in the
eighteenth century, religion, mysticism,
the Jewish enlightenment in Central
Europe. It was important to her to get
even the smallest details right. In one
scene, she depicted women sitting and
sewing, with light reflecting off their
metal needles. Reading it over, she
sensed that something was wrong, and
then realized that it was too early for
metal needles in that part of Europe;
people sewed with wooden ones. Later,
when the book was nearly finished,
consultants hired by her publisher
pointed out that potatoes were not com-
monly eaten in Central Europe in that
period; rice, imported from Turkey, was
the staple.
The result is Tokarczuk’s most am-
bitious work yet. More than nine hun-
dred pages long, the novel interweaves
the perspectives of dozens of people
connected to Frank, including Bene-
dykt Chmielowski, a priest who wrote
the first Polish-language encyclopedia;
Elisha Schorr, a rabbi who was en-
tranced by Frank’s charisma; Moliwda,
a Polish nobleman who was Frank’s
translator, confidant, and eventual be-
trayer; and a dying Jewish grandmother
who swallows a kabbalistic amulet and
achieves immortality.
The book was an instant best-seller
and won the country’s most prestigious
literary prize, the Nike Award. Its suc-
cess underscored something that was
obvious during my visit: Poland’s Jew-
ish heritage is discussed much more
openly today than it was when I was
there in the nineties. At Apostrof, one
panelist wore a T-shirt with Yiddish
lettering. On the site of the Warsaw
Ghetto, there now stands a popular
new museum, the POLIN Museum of
the History of Polish Jews. (“Polin” is
the Yiddish name for Poland.) “There’s
no Polish culture without Jewish cul-
ture,” Tokarczuk said to me at one point.
Still, Poland’s embrace of this heritage
is far from unequivocal. When To-
karczuk first read about Frank, she re-
alized that many people had incentives
to forget his story: Polish Catholics,
embarrassed by Frank’s treatment by
the Church (he was imprisoned in a
monastery for thirteen years); Ortho-
dox Jews, who regard Frank as a trai-
tor; and even Polish descendants of the
Frankists, who might not want to be
reminded of their Jewish roots.
Tokarczuk relishes her role as a chal-
lenger of orthodoxies, and in an inter-
view after the book won the Nike Award
she urged her fellow-citizens to ac-
knowledge the darker elements of the
nation’s past. “We have come up with
this history of Poland as an open, tol-
erant country,” she said. “Yet we com-
mitted horrendous acts as colonizers,
as a national majority that suppressed
the minority, as slaveowners, and as the
murderers of Jews.” (“Colonizers” was
a reference to the resettlement of Poles
in Ukraine; “slaveowners,” to serfdom.)Her e-mail in-box and Facebook page
were promptly flooded with messages
accusing her of treason. “The only jus-
tice for these lies is death,” one person
wrote. Others called for her to be ex-
pelled from Poland. Croft worried for
Tokarczuk’s safety and urged her to
leave the country for a time. Tokarczuk’s
publishers temporarily provided her
with bodyguards. But Tokarczuk re-
mained undaunted. Heresy, she says,
reveals the borders of convention andalso poses the challenge of transcend-
ing those borders; it is “an act of the
free mind.”L
ately, Tokarczuk has been toying with
the idea of living more or less full
time in her country house in the Kłodzko
Valley, and the place is being renovated
and extended. Five years ago, she founded
a summer literary festival in the nearby
town of Nowa Ruda, featuring writers
from across Eastern Europe. She ob-
tained funding from the local govern-
ment and several private sponsors, in-
cluding a toilet-paper manufacturer. “I
thought of making a medal out of toilet
paper for our minister of culture,” To-
karczuk said, grinning.
One day, she and Zygadło drove from
their apartment in Wrocław to the coun-
try to check on the construction work.
Heading south out of the city, we passed
a monument commemorating the six-
hundredth anniversary of the region’s
settlement, and then an Amazon ware-
house. An older white man crossed the
street holding the hand of a biracial
child. “A beautiful young Pole,” Zy-
gadło remarked.
As the highway climbed into the
mountains, a heavy rain began to fall.
Tokarczuk reacted as if it were a per-
sonal affront. “We won’t be able to see
the view,” she complained. In good
weather, she loves to climb to the top of
a hill behind her house, from which you
can see the mountains that stretch along
the Czech border.
I started to recognize the landscape
that Tokarczuk describes in “Drive Your
Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” her
newly translated animal-rights murder
mystery. When she began writing it, she
had already conceived the idea for “The
Books of Jacob,” but she knew that would
take years and she needed to give her
publisher a new novel soon. Wanting
to write “something light,” she decided
to try her hand at a detective novel. “You
have a form, you know?” she said. “You
just need time to design everything, and
then it’s easy. No wonder these mystery
writers can produce a new book every
single year.” Zygadło, in the driver’s seat,
hastily shushed her.
The idea for the mystery first came
to Tokarczuk during a winter she spent
living alone in the valley after separat-
ing from her husband, with only herTHENEWYORKER,AUGUST 5 &12, 2019 25