Olga Tokarczuk Wins The Nobel Prize In Literature 2018

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2018 has been awarded to Olga Tokarczuk for “a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life,” the committee said in a statement. In the same genre, the Nobel Prize in Literature 2019 has been awarded to the Austrian author Peter Handke.

Olga Tokarczuk also won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize in 2018. She won this award for her novel Flights.

Key Takeaways:

• The Nobel committee announced that the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk has won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2018, this Thursday. 
• The 2018 Literature Award was postponed last year, following the sex abuse allegations that had left the Swedish Academy stunned.
• Polish author Olga Tokarczuk has been chosen “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life,” the committee said in a statement.
• Last year itself, Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Flights had won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize.

Read More: On The Art Of Creating Performance Pieces From Literature

Made Her Debut In 1993

Born in 1962 in Sulechów in Poland, Tokarczuk made her debut in 1993 as a fiction writer with Podróz ludzi Księgi (The Journey of the Book-People). To date, the historical novel Księgi Jakubowe (The Books of Jacob) is considered to be the best of her works. The novel was released in 2014. As the purpose behind conferring her with the Nobel Prize reads, her work in this novel clearly represents the supreme capacity of a novel to depict anything beyond human understanding. Tokarczuk currently resides in Wroclaw.

She has also won the Nike award, which is Poland's equivalent of the Booker Prize

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.

Read More: Of Translations, Writing And Bringing Social Change Through Literature

Winner Of The Man Booker International Prize 2018

Olga Tokarczuk also won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize in 2018. She won this award for her novel Flights. 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, reported Hindustan Times. The author shared the money with Jennifer Croft, the translator.

“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,” Lisa Appignanesi, a British-Canadian writer says.

She has also won the Nike award, which is Poland's equivalent of the Booker Prize. Post this, when she appeared for a Television interview, she outraged right-wing patriots by saying that, contrary to its self-image as a plucky survivor of oppression, Poland itself had committed “horrendous acts” of colonisation at times in its history. She was then labelled as a traitor and her publisher had to hire bodyguards for a while to protect her.

Picture Credits: Hindustan Times

Read More: JCB Prize For Literature Has Prominent Women Authors In Its Longlist