Olga Tokarczuk

Olga Tokarczuk ( born January 29, 1962 in Sulechów in Zielona Góra, Poland) is a Polish psychologist and writer.

Life

Prior to her career as a writer, she studied from 1980 to psychology at the University of Warsaw. During this time she worked in a home for young people with behavioral problems. After graduating in 1985, she first moved to Breslau and later Wałbrzych, where she began work as a therapist. Tokarczuk sees himself in the spiritual tradition of Carl Gustav Jung, whose theories she cites as an inspiration for her literary work. Since 1998 Tokarczuk lives in the small village of Nowa Ruda at Krajanów. From here she led for several years their own publishing Ruta before they quite devoted to writing.

Work

1989 is the year of the publication of her first book, one with Miasta w lustrach (cities in mirrors ) titled collection of poems. Her debut novel, Podróż ludzi księgi ( journey of the book people ), a parable about the search of two lovers after the " mystery of the book" ( a metaphor for the meaning of life ), is located in France in the 17th century, and appeared in 1993. The author gave the book instant popularity among readers as with critics. The follow-up novel EE ( 1996) bears the title, the initials of his heroine, a young woman named " Erna Eltzner " growing up in a middle class German - Polish family in Breslau the pre-war years and developed superhuman abilities.

Tokarczuk's third novel Prawiek i inne czasy ( Primeval and Other Times ) was published in 1996 and remains to this day their most successful. He plays in the fictional town of Ur in eastern Poland, which is populated by eccentric veterans. The town is under the protection of four archangels ( Raphael, Uriel, Gabriel and Michael ), from whose perspective the novel records the lives of the residents over a period of eight decades since 1914. In parallel to the varied history of Poland at that time, but at the same time a strange trance of her, the novel describes the constant recurrence of all human pleasures and pains that are visible in Ur as if through a magnifying glass. The novel was translated into many languages, including German, and founded Tokarczuk's international reputation as one of the main protagonists of Polish literature in the present.

After Prawiek i inne czasy Tokarczuk's work began to evolve away from the novel form and towards shorter prose texts and essays. Her next book Szafa ( wardrobe, 1997) was a collection of three texts on the nature of short stories. Dom Dzienny, dom nocny ( Taghaus, Night House, 1998), although formally a novel is more of a patchwork of loosely connected texts, sketches and essays on past and present in the adopted home of the author, a village in the Sudeten Mountains near the Polish- Czech border. Although Tokarczuk most difficult book, at least for those who are not familiar with the history of Central Europe, it is the only one that has so far been translated into English.

Since that time Tokarczuk has published a number of collections of short stories: Gra na wielu bębenkach (playing on many drums, 2001) and most recently Ostatnie history ( Recent stories ) - as well as an essay on Bolesław Prus ' classic The doll ( Lalka i perła / The doll And The pearl, 2000). It also published a book of three modern Christmas stories together with their equally popular colleagues Jerzy Pilch and Andrzej Stasiuk ( Opowieści wigilijne, 2000).

Prices

Tokarczuk is the recipient of numerous literary awards in Poland and abroad. In 2002 she was awarded the bridge Berlin Prize, 2008, along with Ingo Schulze with the Samuel Bogumil Linde price.

She won the Nike Audience Award since 1997 three times. For her work Prawiek i inne czasy he was the first-ever awarded. In 2008 she was awarded the grand prize for Nike Bieguni.

Works

• Miasto w lustrach, 1989
• Podróż ludzi Księgi, 1993

• E.E., 1995
• Prawiek i inne czasy, 1996

• Szafa, short stories, 1997

• Dom Dzienny, dom nocny, prose, 1998

• Lalka i Perla, essay, 2000

• Gra na wielu bębenkach, short stories, 2001

• Opowiadania zimowe. (Winter tale; book, only in Polish ), 2003
• Ostatnie history, 2004
• Anna In w grobowcach świata, 2006

• Bieguni, 2008

• Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych. 2009

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