Fagin the Thief

Acclaimed historical novelist Epstein (Let the Dead Bury the Dead) retells Dickens’s classic Oliver Twist through the perspective of its chief villain, Fagin, in the process redressing the criticisms of antisemitism that have dogged Dickens’s novel for nearly two centuries. Readers first meet Jacob Fagin as he prepares breakfast for his gang of child criminals, including Jack Dawkins (the Artful Dodger), Nancy, and, of course, Oliver. Nan’s boyfriend Bill Sikes is planning a heist and wants the assistance of one of Fagin’s wards, setting in motion a chain of events that will be familiar for readers of Oliver Twist. Epstein also takes readers back decades to Fagin’s childhood, when he lived with his mother in a Jewish enclave of London and fell under the sway of an infamous pickpocket. After his mother’s sudden death, Fagin was forced to survive on his wits, scrounging and hustling with ruthless impunity, forging the reputation that Dickens would immortalize.