Olga Tokarczuk is the recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was born in Poland in 1962 and studied psychology at the Warsaw University. She is the most translated Polish writer and the author of eight novels and three short story collections. She has twice won the most prestigious Polish literary prize, the Nike Award, for Flights (Bieguni) in 2008 and for Books of Jacob (Księgi Jakubowe) in 2015.
Her most acclaimed novels include Primeval (Prawiek i Inne Czasy) published in 1996, House of Day, House of Night (Dom Dzienny, Dom Nocny) published in 1998, Flights (Bieguni) published in 2007, which also won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Awards in Translated Literature 2018, and Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead (Prowadź Swój Pług Przez Kości Umarłych) which was published in 2009 and shortlisted for the 2019 and 2022 Man Booker International Award, longlisted for the National Book Awards in Translated Literature, the Dublin Literary Award and the Warwick Prize. Her most recent novel, the Books of Jacob, is published in English by Fitzcarraldo, Riverhead and Text Publishing in 2021 (trans. Jennifer Croft). Her work is translated into more than forty five languages.
Olga Tokarczuk lives in Wroclaw in Poland, where she is setting up a Foundation which will offer scholarships for writers and translators and educational programmes on literature.