(Fiction, 336 pp, 2025)
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.
Discussion questions provided by the publisher
Author’s website
Review by Steven Mirkin, Jewish Journal, July 9, 2025
Review by Kirkus Reviews, November 9, 2024
Review by John P. Loonam, Washington Independent Review of Books, February 21, 2025
Review by Publishers Weekly, n.d.
Reader reviews, Book Browse, n.d.
Review by Amy McGrath, WriteHear, February 21, 2025
Review by Aaron Howard, Jewish Herald-Voice, April 24, 2025
Review by Megan Peck Shub, Jewish Book Council, February 25, 2025
Review by Philip Zozzaro, Book Reporter, March 1, 2025
Review by Alida Becker, The New York Times, March 28, 2025
Interviews
Interview with the author by Kay Daly, Chicago Review of Books, February 25, 2025
Interview with author on National Public Radio, February 22, 2025
Interview with the author on Beyond the Stack, February 25, 2025 (video)
