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Fagin the Thief

by Allison Epstein

You might be surprised to learn that Oliver Twist has nothing more than a walk-on part in FAGIN THE THIEF (Doubleday, 321 pp., $28). And even more surprised to learn that Dickens’s notorious villain emerges from this reimagining of his origins as somewhat less villainous — still a sinister master criminal, but indelibly shaped by the prejudices of 19th-century London, where even as a boy he suffers “the natural consequence of being visibly Jewish and visibly poor.”