Olga Tokarczuk
She was born in 1962 in Sulechów, Poland. Both of her parents were teachers, and her father, specifically, was in charge of the school library. It was there that the future Nobel laureate began to read anything she could lay her hands on and develop her literary instinct and metaphysical gaze. Studies in psychology later followed at the University of Warsaw. She worked as a psychotherapist, but she abandoned the profession along the way to dedicate herself entirely to writing. In 1989, she published her first poetry collection. Her place in literature was cemented with her third novel, “Primeval and Other Times” (1996). It details a fascinating account of Poland’s history, from 1914 to the end of the 20th century, in the guise of an epic allegory. “Primeval” is a mythical village—a microcosm of symbolical significance—that is guarded by four archangels, and through their crystalline and lyrical eyes, we observe the lives of its inhabitants.
In 1998, Olga Tokarczuk continued with “House of Day, House of Night,” where she underscored her particular interest in the contestations caused within the fields of geography, culture, and individual and collective identity, all set against the backdrop of the galvanic landscape of Silesia. In 2007, she took the most decisive step in her career as she published the novel "Flights,” and in 2008, she received the Nike Award for it, the most significant literary award in her country. Ten years later, the English translation of the same book by Jennifer Croft (“Flights,” Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017) earned the International Booker Prize and made her worldwide renowned and loved, placing her writing style at the forefront of artistic and humanitarian quests as it rightly deserved. The unrivaled “Flights,” where the notion of travel and the element of human anatomy conspire and co-weave a vast network of diverse narratives, possibly comprises her most characteristic work, the most notable example of an inclusive gaze onto the existential relationship of humankind with reality and its surrounding world.
In 2009, the Polish author returned with “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” a book that was adapted for film by the Polish director Agnieszka Holland in 2017 and for theater by the British director Simon McBurney and Complicité troupe, a show that also captivated the Greek audience in October 2023 at the Onassis Stegi.
In 2014, following extensive research, Olga Tokarczuk published what is widely considered her magnum opus, the massive, multipage historical novel “The Books of Jacob.” A ruminative and mystical work about history itself, its twists and turns that define the fate of entire peoples. Set in the middle of the 18th century, in the century of Enlightenment, the exhilarating author mirrors the contemporary situation of a large part of Europe. For this book, she received the Nike Award for the second time in 2015 and was also shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize. This novel, a masterpiece of contemporary prose and a majestic literary return to a rather unknown chapter of European history, is organized around an actual person, the mysterious and divisive figure of Jacob Frank, who lived in the 18th century and was considered by some as an “unrepentant heretic” and by others as “the new Messiah.”
Tokarczuk’s most recent work is the novel “Empuzjon” (2022), expected to be released in Greece in 2024. The title is a term conceived by the author and is a hybrid made up of the words “Empusa” and “Symposium” (“sympozjon” in Polish). We are transported to Central Europe in 1913. The tenants at the “Guesthouse for Gentlemen” form a group discussing philosophical, political, and literary issues. The situation is reminiscent of Plato’s “Symposium.” In the debates, we see certain cultural stereotypes reproduced around the female gender, which traverse the canon of Western literature, beginning with the ancient Greek literary corpus. Amidst this patriarchal system, the woman figure is situated on the boundaries between human existence and the uncanny. Empusa, the ever-changing, shape-shifting mythical creature, represents female uncanniness. Correspondingly, all the female characters in Tokarczuk’s book retain this element of mystery, strangeness, and uncanniness. The woman figure is sometimes presented as an enigmatic femme fatale and other times as a demon or a frightful scarecrow doll.
“Tenderness is deep emotional concern about another being, its fragility, its unique nature, and its lack of immunity to suffering and the effects of time. Tenderness perceives the bonds that connect us, the similarities and sameness between us. It is a way of looking that shows the world as being alive, living, interconnected, cooperating with, and codependent on itself. Literature is built on tenderness toward any being other than ourselves. It is the basic psychological mechanism of the novel. Thanks to this miraculous tool, the most sophisticated means of human communication, our experience can travel through time, reaching those who have not yet been born, but who will one day turn to what we have written, the stories we told about ourselves and our world,” as noted, among others, by Olga Tokarczuk in her lecture delivery in Stockholm for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The author lives in Wroclaw, Poland, where, since 2020, she has established a foundation [Olga Tokarczuk Foundation/ Fundacja Olgi Tokarczuk] that offers scholarships to writers and translators as well as educational programs that promote literature.
Her books (“Primeval and Other Times,” “Flights,” “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” and “The Books of Jacob”) are published in Greek by Kastaniotis Editions, all translated from the Polish language by Alexandra Ioannidou and Anastasia Chatzigiannidi.
