NPR's Scott Simon speaks with novelist Allison Epstein about her new novel "Fagin the Thief," which imagines a backstory for the character from the Charles Dickens book "Oliver Twist." Sometimes ...

In both Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist and Allison Epstein’s novel ... the term “Jew” is interchangeable with the character ...

What do you do with a problem like Fagin, the petty-thief ringleader and most indelible character in Charles Dickens’s “Oliver Twist” — and one of the most vicious antisemitic stereotypes ...

Who was the real villain of Oliver Twist — Fagin, introduced in the cast of characters as “a crafty old Jew, a receiver of stolen goods,” or the author Charles Dickens himself? As it turned ...

Allison Epstein's 'Fagin the Thief' gives a Charles Dickens character a second chance Author Allison Epstein says when she read Oliver Twist, she found Charles Dickens' portrayal of Fagin ...

That was my introduction to the character of Fagin. And then as I got old enough to read the actual "Oliver Twist," I very quickly realized this is a very different kind of character in the ...

That was my introduction to the character of Fagin. And then as I got old enough to read the actual "Oliver Twist," I very quickly realized this is a very different kind of character in the Dickens ...