Olga Tokarchuk

Olga Tokarczuk is a Polish writer, essayist, activist, and public figure. She is the winner of the 2018 International Booker Prize and the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.” Olga Tokarczuk was born on January 29, 1962, in Sulechów. She graduated from the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Warsaw and then worked as a psychotherapist in Wałbrzych. Tokarczuk made her debut with a collection of poems. In 1993, her first novel, The Journey of the Book People, was published. The novel Flights brought her the country’s most prestigious literary award, the Nike Award (2008). In 2018, she received the International Booker Prize for the novel Flights. She became the first Polish writer to receive this prestigious award. Olga Tokarczuk has two unbreakable rules in life. The first: no decisions before morning coffee. The second: one writes what is written. The writer does not analyze what a given idea will be enough for — a short story or a novel. She simply writes, and that is all.