Olga Tokarczuk

Olga Tokarczuk (born 29 January 1962 in Sulechów near Zielona Góra, Poland) is one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful Polish writers of her generation, particularly noted for the hallmark mythical tone of her writing. She trained as a psychologist at the University of Warsaw. She has published a collection of Poems, three novels, as well as several book with shorter prose texts and essays. Her book Bieguni /"Runners" won the Nike Award 2008. She attended the 2010 Edinburgh Book festival to discuss her most successful book "Primeval and other times" as well as her other work. She now lives in Wroclaw, Poland.

Origins

Before starting her literary career, from 1980 Tokarczuk 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 a small village near Nowa Ruda, from where she also manages her private publishing company Ruta. She now lives in Wroclaw, Poland.

Published Work

1989 saw the publication of Tokarczuk's first book, a collection of poems entitled Miasta w lustrach ("Cities in mirrors"). Her debut novel, Podróż ludzi księgi ("The Journey of the Book-People"), a parable on two lovers' quest for the "secret of the Book" (a metaphor for the meaning of life) set in 17th century France, appeared in 1993 and gained her instant popularity with the audience and reviewers. The follow-up novel E. E. (1996) 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 (the German city that was to become the Polish Wrocław after World War II) in the 1920s, who develops psychic abilities.

Tokarczuk's third novel Prawiek i inne czasy ("Primeval and other times") was published in 1996 and remains her most successful to date. It is set in the fictitious village of Prawiek/Primeval at the very heart of Poland, which is populated by some eccentric, archetypical characters. The village is guarded by four archangels, from whose perspective the novel chronicles the lives of Prawiek's inhabitants over a period of eight decades, beginning in 1914. Parallel to but strangely detached from Poland's meandering political history during this time, it describes the continuum of all human joys and pains, which Prawiek seems to contain as in a nutshell. Prawiek... was translated into many languages (published in English in 2009, by Twisted Spoon Press) 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 ("The Wardrobe", 1997) was a collection of three novella-type stories. Dom dzienny, dom nocny ("House of Day, House of Night", 1998), 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 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.

"House of Day, House of Night" was followed by a collection of short stories - Gra na wielu bębenkach ("Playing on many drums", 2001) - as well as a non-fiction essay on Bolesław Prus' classic novel The Doll (Lalka i perła /"The Doll and the Pearl", 2000). She also published a volume with three modern Christmas tales together with her equally popular male colleagues Jerzy Pilch and Andrzej Stasiuk (Opowieści wigilijne, 2000).

Ostatnie historie ("The last stories") of 2004 is an exploration of death from the perspectives of three generations, while the novel Anna In in the Catacombs 2006 was a contribution to the Canongate Myth Series by Polish publisher Znak. Her latest book Bieguni /"Runners" 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 Nike Award 2008.

In 2009 the novel ´Drive your Plough over the Bones of the Dead´ was published. The novel is wriiten in the convention of a detective story with the main character telling the story from her point of view. Janina Duszejko, an old, unattractive woman, excentric in her perception of other humans through astrology, relates a series of deaths in a rural area, somewhere near Klodzko, in Poland. She explains the deaths as caused by wild animals in vengance on hunters. The novel poses questions related with human responsibility for and to the nature and the dangers of personal mythology.

Tokarczuk is the laureate of numerous literary awards both in and outside Poland. In 2008 she finally received the main jury award of the most important Polish accolade, the NIKE. Prior to this she won the audience award three times, Prawiek i inne czasy being the award's first recipient ever.

Tokarczuk is a member of Zieloni 2004, Poland's Green Party.

Books

1989: Miasta w lustrach, Kłodzko: Okolice. ("Cities in Mirrors")
1993: Podróż ludzi księgi. Warszawa: Przedświt. ("The Journey of the Book-People")
1999: E. E. Warszawa: PIW.
1996: Prawiek i inne czasy. Warszawa: W.A.B. ("Primeval and Other Times". Twisted Spoon Press ISBN 978-80-86264-35-6)
1997: Szafa. Lublin: UMCS. ("The Wardrobe")
1998: Dom dzienny, dom nocny. Wałbrzych: Ruta. (House of Day, House of Night. Granta. ISBN 1-86207-514-X)
2000 (with Jerzy Pilch and Andrzej Stasiuk): Opowieści wigilijne. Wałbrzych: Ruta/Czarne ("Christmas Tales")
2000: Lalka i perła. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie. ("The Doll and the Pearl")
2001: Gra na wielu bębenkach. Wałbrzych: Ruta. ("Playing on Many Drums")
2004: Ostatnie historie. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie. ("The Last Stories").
2006: Anna In w grobowcach świata. Kraków: Znak. ("Anna In in the Tombs of the World").
2007: Bieguni. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie. ("Runners").
2009: Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie. ("Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead")

External links

Review of House of Day, House of Night in The Guardian
Short biography at www.polishwriting.net
Travel Files, article by Olga Tokarczuk January 2010, English, originally published in Polityka
Olga Tokarczuk at Twisted Spoon Press