And The Man Booker Goes To Polish Novelist Olga Tokarczuk

Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk's novel ‘Flights’ has won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize.

The English translation of the Polish novel won prize money of £50,000 (57,000 euros, $67,000). It was the unanimous choice by the panel after coming on top of a shortlist of six titles. The winner was announced at a ceremony in London on Tuesday (May 22), reported Hindustan Times. The author shares the money with Jennifer Croft, the translator.

“Tokarczuk is a writer of wonderful wit, imagination and literary panache,” said head judge Lisa Appignanesi

“In ‘Flights’, brilliantly translated by Jennifer Croft, by a series of startling juxtapositions she flies us through a galaxy of departures and arrivals, stories and digressions, all the while exploring matters close to the contemporary and human predicament - where only plastic escapes mortality,” Appignanesi added.

‘Flights’ narrates a travel experience binding with explorations of the human body

Tokarczuk and Croft’s partnership explores an unique style. The author has eight novels two short-story collections to her credit. Croft, on the other hand, is an accomplished translator of Polish, Spanish and Ukrainian. The writer also co-wrote the screenplay for the Polish crime film Spoor, which won the Alfred Bauer Prize for a work of particular innovation at the Berlin film festival in 2017. Spoor made headlines as it was also selected as Poland’s entry for the best foreign language film at the 2018 Oscars.

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Tokarczuk is an avid traveller. Her books have been turned into plays and films and translated into more than 25 languages, including Catalan, Hindi and Japanese. The mother of one is a known animal-lover with a keen interest in astrology and psychoanalyst Carl Jung.

For those of you who don’t know, Man Booker International Prize Award is the international counterpart to Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize and welcomes books published in any language that have been translated into English.

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Feature Image Credit: Hindustan Times

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