The winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, announced earlier this month, Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk (born 1962), is one of postcommunist Europe’s most gifted and remarkable writers. Her literary career, which spans two decades, is richly informed by psychoanalysis, feminist discourse, and the memory of war and ethnic cleansing. Hers is a bright voice calling for dialogue, tolerance, and mutual understanding in a Europe again being torn apart by ultranationalism, ethnic conflict, and autocratic politics. Many of Tokarczuk’s novels and short story collections are available in English translation, including House of Day, House of Night (1998), Primeval and Other Times (1996), and her masterpiece Flights (2007), for which she was awarded the Man Booker International Prize Fiction in 2018. Tokarczuk’s novels and stories feature in Slavic Department’s courses such as Intro to Polish Culture and Problems in Polish Literature, taught by Professor George Gasyna. Professor David Cooper teaches selections of Tokarczuk’s writings in his Postcommunist Fiction course.
See the announcement, and the story by NPR for more on Tokarczuk and the prize.