Olga Tokarczuk


Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual who has been described in Poland as one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful authors of her generation. In 2018, she won the Man Booker International Prize for her novel Flights. In 2019, she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Tokarczuk is particularly noted for the mythical tone of her writing. She trained as a psychologist at the University of Warsaw and published a collection of poems, several novels, as well as other books with shorter prose works. Flights won the Nike Award, Poland's top literary prize, in 2008. She attended the 2010 Edinburgh Book Festival to discuss her book Primeval and Other Times and other work. With her novel Księgi Jakubowe, Tokarczuk won the Nike Award again in 2015. In the same year, Tokarczuk received the German-Polish International Bridge Prize, a recognition extended to persons especially accomplished in the promotion of peace, democratic development and mutual understanding among the people and nations of Europe.
Tokarczuk is a leftist, a vegetarian, an atheist, and a feminist. She has been criticized by some groups in Poland as unpatriotic, anti-Christian and a promoter of eco-terrorism. She has denied the allegations, has described herself as a "true patriot" and has said that groups criticizing her are xenophobic and damage Poland's international reputation.

Early life

Tokarczuk was born in Sulechów near Zielona Góra, in western Poland. One of her grandmothers was from Ukraine. Before starting her literary career, from 1980 she trained as a psychologist at the University of Warsaw. During her studies, she volunteered in an asylum for adolescents with behavioural problems. After her graduation in 1985, she moved first to Wrocław and later to Wałbrzych, where she began practising as a therapist. Tokarczuk considers herself a disciple of Carl Jung and cites his psychology as an inspiration for her literary work. Since 1998, Tokarczuk has lived in the village of Krajanów along the Polish-Czech border near Nowa Ruda, from where she also manages her private publishing company Ruta.

Career

Tokarczuk's first book was published in 1989, a collection of poems entitled Miasta w lustrach.
Her debut novel, Podróż ludzi księgi, a parable on two lovers' quest for the "secret of the Book" set in 17th century France, was published in 1993.
The follow-up novel E. E. took its title from the initials of its protagonist, a young woman named Erna Eltzner, who grows up in a bourgeois German-Polish family in Breslau in the 1920s, who develops psychic abilities.
Tokarczuk's third novel Prawiek i inne czasy was published in 1996 and became highly successful. It is set in the fictitious village of Prawiek at the very heart of Poland, which is populated by some eccentric, archetypical characters. The novel chronicles the lives of Prawiek's inhabitants over a period of eight decades, beginning in 1914. Prawiek... was translated into many languages and established Tokarczuk's international reputation as one of the most important representatives of Polish literature in her generation.
After Prawiek..., Tokarczuk's work began drifting away from the novel genre towards shorter prose texts and essays. Her next book Szafa was a collection of three novella-type stories. Dom dzienny, dom nocny, although nominally a novel, is rather a patchwork of loosely connected disparate stories, sketches, and essays about life past and present in the author's adopted home since that year, a village in Krajanów in the Sudetes near the Polish-Czech border. Even though arguably Tokarczuk's most "difficult", at least for those unfamiliar with Central European history, it was her first book to be published in English.
, 2017
House of Day, House of Night was followed by a collection of short stories – Gra na wielu bębenkach – as well as a non-fiction essay Lalka i perła, on the subject of Bolesław Prus' classic novel The Doll. She also published a volume with three modern Christmas tales, together with her fellow writers Jerzy Pilch and Andrzej Stasiuk.
Ostatnie historie of 2004 is an exploration of death from the perspectives of three generations, while the novel Anna in the Catacombs was a contribution to the Canongate Myth Series by Polish publisher Znak. Tokarczuk's book Bieguni returns to the patchwork approach of essay and fiction, the major theme of which is modern day nomads. It won both the reader prize and the jury prize of the 2008 Nike Award.
In 2009 the novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was published. It is written in the convention of a detective story with the main character telling the story from her point of view. Janina Duszejko, an old woman, eccentric in her perception of other humans through astrology, relates a series of deaths in a rural area near Kłodzko, Poland. She explains the deaths as caused by wild animals in vengeance on hunters.
In 2014, Tokarczuk published an epic novel Księgi Jakubowe. The book earned her another Nike Award. Its historical setting is 18th century Poland and eastern-central Europe and it deals with an important episode in Jewish history. In regard to the historical and ideological divides of Polish literature, the book has been characterized as anti-Sienkiewicz. It was soon acclaimed by critics and readers alike, but its reception has been hostile in some Polish nationalistic circles and Olga Tokarczuk became a target of an internet hate and harassment campaign.
In 2015, Tokarczuk was criticized by the Nowa Ruda Patriots association, who demanded that the town's council revoke the writer's honorary citizenship of Nowa Ruda because, as the association claimed, she had tarnished the good name of the Polish nation. The association's postulate was supported by Senator Waldemar Bonkowski of the Law and Justice Party, according to whom Tokarczuk's literary output and public statements are in "absolute contradiction to the assumptions of the Polish historical politics". Tokarczuk asserted that she is the true patriot, not the people and groups who criticize her, and whose alleged xenophobic and racist attitudes and actions are harmful to Poland and to Poland's image abroad.
In 2017, her novel Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych was the basis of the crime film Spoor directed by Agnieszka Holland, which won the Alfred Bauer Prize at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival.

Awards

Tokarczuk is the laureate of numerous literary awards both in and outside Poland. Besides the Nike Award, the most important Polish literary accolade, she won the audience award several times, Prawiek i inne czasy being the award's first recipient ever. In 2010, she received the Silver Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis. In 2013 Tokarczuk was awarded the Vilenica Prize.
Olga Tokarczuk is the recipient of the 2015 Brückepreis, the 20th edition of the award granted by the "Europa-City Zgorzelec/Görlitz". The prize is a joint undertaking of the German and Polish border twin cities aimed at advancing mutual, regional and European peace, understanding and cooperation among people of different nationalities, cultures and viewpoints. Particularly appreciated by the jury was Tokarczuk's creation of literary bridges connecting people, generations and cultures, especially residents of the border territories of Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic, who have had often different existential and historical experiences. Also stressed was Tokarczuk's "rediscovery" and elucidation of the complex multinational and multicultural past of the Lower Silesia region, an area of great political conflicts. Attending the award ceremony in Görlitz, Tokarczuk was impressed by the positive and pragmatic attitude demonstrated by the mayor of the German town in regard to the current refugee and migrant crisis, which she contrasted with the ideological uproar surrounding the issue in Poland.
In 2018 she won the Man Booker International Prize for Flights, translated by Jennifer Croft. The book explores how a person moves through time and space.
Tokarczuk also won the Kulturhuset International Literary Prize in Stockholm for her 2015 work The Books of Jacob, which has been translated into Swedish.
In 2019, Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob translated by Maryla Laurent won Prix Laure Bataillon Award for the best foreign-language book translated into French in the last year.
In 2019, her 2009 novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and published in 2018, was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize.
Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature in 2019 for her "narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life". The 2018 award had been postponed due to controversy within the Nobel committee.
In 2020, she received the title of an Honorary Citizen of Warsaw as a recognition of her literary achievements.

Krajanów

Since 1998, Tokarczuk has lived in the village of Krajanów along the Polish-Czech border near Nowa Ruda, from where she also manages her private publishing company Ruta. Tokarczuk is one of the hosts for the annual Literary Heights Festival, which has included events in the village.
The locale has influenced Tokarczuk's literary work. Her novel Dom dzienny, dom nocny is a patchwork of loosely connected disparate stories, sketches, and essays about life past and present in the author's adopted home located in the Sudete Mountains in a multi-cultural borderland. While some have labeled it Tokarczuk's most "difficult" piece, at least for those unfamiliar with Central European history, it was her first book to be published in English.

Olga Tokarczuk Foundation

It was announced in 2019 that Polish poet Tymoteusz Karpowicz's villa in Wrocław would become the future home of Olga Tokarczuk's Foundation. Aside from Tokarczuk, Agnieszka Holland and Ireneusz Grin will join her on the foundation's Board of Directors. The writer will allocate the 350,000 złoty she was awarded upon winning the Nobel Prize.

Family

Roman Fingas was Tokarczuk's first husband. They married when she was 23 and later divorced. Their son Zbigniew was born in 1986. Grzegorz Zygadło is Olga Tokarczuk's second husband.

Books

Novels
Short story collections
Poetry
Other

English translations