Conceived of as a set of fragmentary manuscripts from an unpublished Joseph Roth novel, Mario Bellatin’s Jacob the Mutant is a novella in a perpetual state of transformation — a story about a man named Jacob, an ersatz rabbi and owner of a roadside tavern. But when reality shifts, so does Jacob, mutating into another person entirely, while the novella mutates into another story. Cleverly translated by Jacob Steinberg, this Phoneme Media edition of a new novel by one of Mexico’s most notorious and celebrated writers includes a translator’s afterword and explanatory maps by illustrator Zsu Szkurka.