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A thrilling reimagining of the world of Dickens, as seen through the eyes of the infamous Jacob Fagin, London’s most gifted pickpocket, liar, and rogue.
Long before Oliver Twist stumbled onto the scene, Jacob Fagin was scratching out a life for himself in the dark alleys of nineteenth-century London. Born in the Jewish enclave of Stepney shortly after his father was executed as a thief, Jacob and his open-minded mother, Leah, are each other’s whole world. But Jacob’s prospects are forever altered when a light-fingered pickpocket takes Jacob under his wing and teaches him a trade that pays far better than the neighborhood boys could possibly dream.
Striking out on his own, Jacob familiarizes himself with London’s highest value neighborhoods while forging his own path in the shadows. But everything changes when he adopts an aspiring teenage thief named Bill Sikes, whose mercurial temper poses a danger to himself and anyone foolish enough to cross him. Along the way, Jacob’s found family expands to include his closest friend, Nancy, and his greatest protege, the Artful Dodger. But as Bill’s ambition soars and a major robbery goes awry, Jacob is forced to decide what he really stands for—and what a life is worth.
Colorfully written and wickedly funny, Allison Epstein breathes fresh life into the teeming streets of Dickensian London–reclaiming one of Victorian literature’s most notorious villains in an unforgettable new adventure.
Praise for Fagin the Thief
Fagin the Thief takes one of literature’s greatest rogues and gives him a soul, a backstory, and a spotlight. Layered and clever, Epstein’s story is as ambitious as it is deeply satisfying.
—Rebecca Makkai, New York Times bestselling author of I Have Some Questions for You
Magnificent . . . Epstein’s Fagin, rarely admirable but surprisingly sympathetic, is an unforgettable creation, and her vibrant secondary characters and depictions of Victorian London add to the novel’s power. Dickens’s fans and critics alike will love this.
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Epstein captures the bravado and vulnerabilities of Jacob’s motley crew of orphans, and the gritty ambience of the alleys, cellars, and seedy pubs they inhabit. She brings to her portrait of Fagin—and even Sikes—a tenderness and empathy that renders them as palpable: men, haunted by loss, longing to be loved. . . a riveting narrative.
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
[Fagin] is, through one lens, a hero to be admired. Through another, he makes his living breaking the law, harboring and shaping the next generation of criminals. In Fagin the Thief, Allison Epstein’s greatly imaginative retelling of Oliver Twist, it’s left to the reader to wrestle with their verdict. […] An empowering, humanizing portrayal.”
—Bookpage
Epstein deftly addresses Oliver Twist’s longstanding ‘Fagin problem,’ not by sanitizing or disowning him, as other adaptations have done, but by lending him a humanity that Dickens’s caricature did not. It’s a lively, finely drawn reimagining and a deeply reverent corrective of a literary monument.
—Library Journal
Heart-wrenching and delicious and impossible to put down, Fagin the Thief does for Fagin what Wicked did for the Wicked Witch of the West. Allison Epstein is absolutely at the top of her game.
—Julia Fine, author of Maddalena and the Dark
More than a simple reimagining of Dickens’s most troubling villain, Fagin the Thief is a haunted look at the loneliness of Victorian London’s underworld. Epstein’s rogues and thieves are at once tenderly imagined and savagely cruel, carving out precarious lives in the shadow of the gallows and the jail. Clever, cowardly, soft-hearted and selfish all at once, Jacob Fagin sheds the constraints of his original story and demands the right to speak for himself.
—Celia Bell, author of The Disenchantment
It takes a very brave or supremely talented author to reimagine one of Dickens’ greatest characters; luckily Allison Epstein is both. Her Fagin is a captivating, complex, deeply human character adrift in a London that’s as richly described and grittily alive as Dickens’ own city.
—Mat Osman, author of The Ghost Theatre
Historical fiction at its finest: gripping prose, a morally gray protagonist, a loveable cast, and a city that is a character all its own. Fagin the Thief drew me into the dark underbelly of Victorian London and took me on an unforgettable journey—and somewhere along the way, it stole my heart, too.
—Genevieve Gornichec, author of The Witch’s Heart
A mesmerizing and deeply nuanced retelling, with a complex and utterly unforgettable protagonist at its heart—Fagin the Thief is a remarkable achievement.
—Natasha Siegel, author of The Phoenix Bride
Epstein skillfully blends humor, tragedy, and suspense while authentically capturing the darker side of nineteenth-century London. . . A glorious must-read.”
—Denny S. Bryce, author of The Other Princess
Fagin the Thief is a gripping retelling of Dickens’s Oliver Twist, unpredictable and full of twists and turns; it kept me hooked, and it also kept me guessing! It’s also a sensitively drawn portrait of one of literature’s most maligned characters.
—Flora Carr, author of The Tower
In a gritty feast of a book which transports readers into Victorian London’s seedy underground, Epstein weaves together a brutal and defiant tale of survival against all odds. Fagin the Thief is a story of what freedom means when being a Jew is worse even than being a thief, and the courage it takes to live life in stubborn opposition to a society determined to do its worst.
—Laura R. Samotin, author of The Sin on Their Bones
Allison Epstein 