A writer and essayist, born in Sulechów in 1962.

Tokarczuk studied psychology at the University of Warsaw and lives in Wałbrzych. An outstanding writer and essayist and a devotee of Jung, she is an authority on philosophy and arcane knowledge. Tokarczuk has won many awards, including the Polish Publishers' Association and Kościelski Awards and has been many times nominated for the Nike Literary Award. Undeniably a great discovery in the Polish literature of the nineties, she is admired by both critics and readers. She is a phenomenon of popularity respected for her good taste, knowledge, literary talent, philosophical depth and the knack of storytelling.

Having tried her hand at poetry as a teenager, Tokarczuk then went silent for many years to make a come back with "Podróż ludzi Księgi / Journey of the People of the Book" [aka "The Journey of the Book-People"] in 1993, a novel which was very well received by the critics. A kind of a modern parable, it talks about a failed expedition for the mysterious Book and of the great love which develops between the main two characters. The plot is set in seventeenth-century France and Spain, yet it is not the local touch but the fascination with Mystery which is essential.

Tokarczuk's next novel, "E.E", published two years later, takes us to a more recent past, its plot set in the early twentieth-century Wrocław. The main character, Erna Eltzner (hence E.E.), a growing up girl from a Polish-German burgher family, is found to possess a gift of the medium. Once again Tokarczuk reveals a fascination with mysteries which are out of reach of the human mind.

Her third novel, "Prawiek i inne czasy / Primeval and Other Times" (1996), is still widely considered her greatest and most resonant success. A mythical village called Prawiek and said to be located in the very centre of Poland is an archetypal microcosm in which all the joys and sorrows known to mankind converge. This is what Jerzy Sosnowski wrote about the book:

"Using fragments of real history, Tokarczuk builds a myth, that is a perfectly ordered history in which all events, be they tragic or evil, are justified. The space is arranged as a mandala - a circle inscribed within a square, a geometric expression of perfection and completion".

Indeed, "Prawiek i inne czasy" represents top achievement in recent Polish mythographical prose.

Tokarczuk's next novel, "Dom dzienny, dom nocny / House of Day, House of Night", written in 1998 and shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2004, is different both in genre and tone, and in fact it is misleading to call it a "novel". A hybrid of diverse and more or less advanced plots, quasi-essay observations, private notes and the like, it is Tokarczuk's most personal and "local" book, drawing inspiration from the area where she lives (a village in Sudety on the Polish and Czech border), such as in the stunning story of the medieval Saint Kummernis, a woman whom God saved from an unwanted marriage by giving her a male face.

Although 1997 saw the publication of Tokarczuk's little collection of three short stories, it was not until "Gra na wielu bębenkach / Playing many drums" [aka "Playing on a Multitude of Drums"] that readers had a chance to admire her talent as a writer of shorter works. The book came out in 2001 and consisted of nineteen short stories divided into three cycles. The first one, numbering a few short stories, merits the term "self-analytical", for Tokarczuk addresses the phenomenon of literary and non-literary creation. The second cycle is apocryphal; like Tokarczuk's fascinating story of Kummernis, which was based on a true story which she had uncovered in provincial Lower Silesia, so four of the short stories featured in this volume have similar roots. Tokarczuk - in her very own way - develops the "follow ups", embellishes and breathes life into naked historical facts. The third, large group of stories offer realistic or, strictly speaking, psychological and incidental observations.

In 2000 Tokarczuk published "Lalka i Perła / The Doll and the Pearl", an essay which proposed a new reading of Bolesław Prus's late nineteenth-century novel "Lalka" considered a masterpiece of Polish literature.

Tokarczuk's latest book, "Ostatnie historie / Latest stories", is another collection of short stories. Short forms are evidently becoming her favourite genre, so much so that has even proposed a story-telling festival.

A novelist and essayist, Tokarczuk, who says about herself, "To me writing novels is telling fairy tales to oneself, moved to maturity", is the top award-winning and most widely admired writer of her generation. She is valued both by literary critics and readers, and that happens extremely rarely.

(Source: based on the note sent in by the Instytut Książki / Book Institute in Cracow, 2004)

After 2004 Olga Tokarczuk published two books, "Anna In w grobowcach świata / Anna In in the Catacombs" in 2006 and "Bieguni / Runners" in 2007. The latter was nominated for the Angelus Central European Literary Award as well as has been honoured with the 2008 Nike Literary Award. It is worth noting that Tokarczuk is a four-time winner of the readers' choice of the Nike Award.

Markedly different from her other books, "Anna In w grobowcach świata" was written within the framework of the international Myths series which has authors (such as, for instance, Margaret Atwood or, prospectively, Jacek Dukaj) retell myths. Tokarczuk has chosen to retell a myth of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of harvest and war who goes to her sister, the goddess of the underworld and death and unexpectedly comes back from there to the world of the living. Inanna is given a chance of returning by her fellow traveller, Nina Szubur, but the return is conditioned on her bringing someone else to the underworld. Her former lover is to be the sacrificial offering and his sister will partake in the sad obligation of staying in the underworld.

The most striking aspect of Tokarczuk's novel is not the reference to mythology, but the creation of a world in which the myth happens in a futuristic, cyberpunk environment. The characters use holographic maps, the kingdom of the underworld is shown as the undergrounds of a futuristic city, and the Father Gods whom Nina Szuber asks for help, resemble technocrats from some evil corporation. Przemysław Czapliński pays a tribute to Tokarczuk's creative powers when he observes that "Tokarczuk has invented a genre, a language and a brand new way of speaking just for this book".

Tokarczuk's "Bieguni / Runners" - allow me to make this distinction - is not a travel book, but a book about the phenomenon of travel. After a mythographic novel with emotional ties to the described place Tokarczuk has surprised readers with a study of the psychology of travelling. At the same time the book's title is the name of an old Orthodox sect which believed that staying put made one vulnerable to the attacks of Evil, while continuous moving helped to redeem the soul. A similar motivation, though more secular and stemming from the longing for freedom, drives the heroes of each of the novel's themes. There is a woman who looks after a disabled child and who does not return home because of a revelation she experienced in church; an Australian researcher who revisits Poland years later, coming to see her terminally ill friend; a mother who takes her child and leaves her husband while on a family holiday in Croatia. There is also a story of Chopin's heart being transported to Poland, and one of a seventeenth-century anatomist, professor Ruysch, his daughter and his collection of specimens which gets ultimately sold to tsarist Russia.

With its many inter-connected themes, the structure of "Bieguni" brings to mind what Tokarczuk did in "Dom dzienny, dom nocny". The concept worked well then - and it does so now, too.

Author: Paweł Kozioł, December 2008

Bibliography:

• "Miasta w lustrach / Cities in mirrors", Kłodzko, 1989
• "Podróż ludzi księgi / The Journey of the People of the Book", Przedświt, Warszawa 1993
• "E.E.", PIW, Warszawa 1995
• "Prawiek i inne czasy / Primeval and Other Times", W.A.B., Warszawa 1996
• "Szafa / The Wardrobe", Wydawnictwo UMCS, Lublin 1997
• "Dom dzienny, dom nocny / House of Day, House of Night", Ruta, Wałbrzych 1998
• "Opowieści wigilijne / Christmas Tales" (together with Jerzy Pilch and Andrzej Stasiuk), Czarna Ruta, 2000
• "Lalka i Perła / The Doll and the Pearl", Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2000
• "Gra na wielu bębenkach / Playing Many Drums", Ruta, Wałbrzych 2001
• "Ostatnie historie / The Latest Stories", Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2004
• "Anna In w grobowcach świata / Anna In in the Catacombs", "Znak", Kraków 2006
• "Bieguni / Runners", Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2007.

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