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Contributor

Olga Tokarczuk

Portrait of Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk
Photo copyright © Karpati&Zarewicz/ZAiKS
Contributor

Olga Tokarczuk

Olga Tokarczuk is one of the most acclaimed contemporary writers in Poland. She is the author of several novels, short-story collections, and essays. In 2018 she was awarded—along with her translator, Jennifer Croft—the Man Booker International Prize for her novel Flights (Bieguni), which also won Poland’s highest literary honor, the Nike, in 2008. In 2015 she received the prestigious Brueckepreis (Bridge Prize), as well as the Nike Readers’ Prize for The Books of Jacob (Księgi Jakubowe). Her House of Day, House of Night, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Granta, 2002; Northwestern University Press, 2003), was shortlisted for the IMPAC Literary Award, and her Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, also translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones  (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018; Riverhead, 2019), and The Books of Jacob, translated by Jennifer Croft (Fitzcarraldo, 2021; Riverhead, 2022), were shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. In 2019, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. 

Articles by Olga Tokarczuk

June-2022-Tokarczuk-Ognosia-Flammarion-Engraving Flammarion engraving, unknown artist
Ognosia
By Olga Tokarczuk
We will need new maps as well as the courage and humor of travelers who won’t hesitate to stick their heads outside the sphere of the world-up-to-this-point, beyond the horizon of existing dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft
First Read—From “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”
By Olga Tokarczuk
The following excerpt is from Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones and out now with Fitzcarraldo Editions. In her mid-sixties, Janina…
Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
knight from chess set
Copyright © Cyrus Chong
The Knight
By Olga Tokarczuk
Why are you crying? he said. Over chess, over that knight?
Translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft
From “Final Stories”
By Olga Tokarczuk
In my dreams Petro doubles and triples, one moment he's young, the next he's old.
Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones