Fagin the Thief
By Allison Epstein (Doubleday)

Charles Dickens’s depiction of the character Fagin in Oliver Twist is irredeemably antisemitic—even more so than Shylock, that other famously reviled Jewish literary character from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Fagin, who takes in children off the street to train them in a life of crime, is, in Dickens’s description, cruel, manipulative, greedy, demonic and, as we’re told more than 300 times, a Jew.

From a contemporary perspective, the 1830s novel has other flaws, most glaringly its reliance on coincidences that defy credulity. Also, its hero, Oliver, is more acted upon than a character with his own volition. Yet we can’t seem to let Oliver Twist go. The novel and its adaptations still ignite moral indignation and profound empathy over the treatment of orphans. It’s just a great yarn. So, what to do about Fagin?

“Sanitizing Fagin, or disowning him, seems like a loss to me,” writes Allison Epstein in the afterword to her engrossing novel, Fagin the Thief. In the vein of Wicked, Epstein retells a well-known tale from the villain’s point of view, challenging the reader’s preconceptions. Just like Gregory Maguire, who gave the Wicked Witch of the West a name—Elphaba—and a backstory, in Epstein’s telling, Dickens’s character is given a first name—Jacob—and becomes more than “the Jew.”

The novel jumps back and forth through time, from the events of Oliver Twist to a rough chronology of Jacob’s life, in the process revealing how he becomes the notorious thief. We meet him when he’s a boy of about 8. He and his mother, Leah, live in an impoverished Jewish ghetto in 1790s London. Young Jacob is loved by his mother but stifled by the rigidity of Jewish study and grinding poverty. He finds liberty and escape in the streets and the artistry of thieving.

While Wicked flips The Wonderful Wizard of Oz on its head, turning Elphaba into the hero, Fagin the Thief doesn’t give its protagonist a makeover so much as render him in three dimensions. Jacob, in Epstein’s telling, is less a cruel overseer and more of a father figure in a world where only the wealthy can afford morals. Epstein sketches the assembling of Jacob’s gang, giving compelling backstories to Oliver Twist characters like the fearsome Bill Sikes and the doomed Nancy. (Oliver, like Dorothy in Wicked, is reduced to an afterthought.) Readers of the Dickens original are in for a surprise when Epstein changes the fates of a few characters. Anything, I guess, can happen in fiction.

Epstein’s subject is the harshness of the world itself, and how it forces most to choose between bad options. It’s natural for the reader to compare Epstein to Dickens and she, like nearly all authors, can’t quite measure up to his descriptive powers and ability to write a scene. Yet her prose carries an understated power, so much so that she practically convinces the reader that she herself has spent a few nights scrambling for food and shelter in 18th century London.

In this time of alarming antisemitism, readers may look to Fagin the Thief to say something revelatory about Jew-hatred. For the most part, Epstein sticks to the story, avoiding meta-commentaries on antisemitism or Jewish existence. An anachronistic reference to a public controversy over Baron de Rothschild’s oath of office—which, the author notes, happened in 1847, not 1825, as it does in the book—feels like a forced attempt at gravitas and commentary.

If this book says anything about Jews, it is that, like anyone, a Jew can be a deeply flawed human in a way uniquely their own. Literature does Jews no favors by pretending anything else. 

Bryan Schwartzman is a writer living outside Philadelphia. Follow his work on his website.