Allison Epstein’s novel Fagin the Thief is the One Bay One Book selection for 2025-26.
Fagin the Thief reimagines Charles Dickens’s London through the eyes of the city’s most gifted pickpocket, liar, and rogue. Long before Oliver Twist stumbled onto the scene, Jacob Fagin was scratching out a life for himself. Born in the Jewish enclave of Stepney shortly after his father was executed as a thief, Jacob is an outcast on the street but dearly loved at home. After a light-fingered pickpocket takes him under his wing and teaches him the trade, Jacob forges his own path in the shadows. His solitary life changes when he takes in Bill Sikes, an aspiring teenage robber with a mercurial temper, along with a variety of street urchins surviving by means of theft.
Expanding and deepening Dickens’s characterization of Fagin, Allison Epstein reveals the world of those struggling on the lowest rung of Victorian London society, and offers a provocative reexamination of the original hateful portrayal in Dickens’s 1838 novel, Oliver Twist.
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Book Groups:
Sets of Fagin the Thief are available free of charge on a first-come, first-served basis to book groups through our Book Club in a Box lending program. The Library also offers eBook and audiobook versions through our eBook program. For more information, please write to leah@jewishcommunitylibrary.org
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