Olga Tokarczuk

Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk ([tɔˈkart͡ʂuk]; born 29 January 1962) is a Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual. She is one of the most critically acclaimed and successful authors of her generation in Poland. In 2019, she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Polish female prose writer for "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life". For her novel Flights, Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. Her works include Primeval and Other Times, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and The Books of Jacob.

Tokarczuk is noted for the mythical tone of her writing. A clinical psychologist from the University of Warsaw, she has published a collection of poems, several novels, as well as other books with shorter prose works. For Flights and The Books of Jacob, she won the Nike Awards, Poland's top literary prize, among other accolades; she has also won the Nike audience award five times. In 2015, she received the German-Polish Bridge Prize for her contribution to mutual understanding between European nations. Tokarczuk faced some backlash from nationalist groups in her homeland after the publication of The Books of Jacob, which is set in 18th-century Poland, because the novel celebrates the country's cultural diversity.

Her works have been translated into almost 40 languages, making her one of the most translated contemporary Polish writers. The Books of Jacob, regarded as her magnum opus, was released in the UK in November 2021 after seven years of translation work, followed by release in the US in February 2022. In March that year, the novel was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.