Get to Know Olga Tokarczuk and ‘Flights’ Through These Six Quotes

Who is the author we’ll be spending time with this summer, Olga Tokarczuk? And what do we know about this strange, fragmented novel Flights that we’re about to begin?

I’ve selected six quotes from Tokarczuk to help us get to know her and Flights. They span her childhood in Poland, the influence of psychology on her writing, the origins of Flights, and “the most important and the strangest set of words in the world.”

But before we hear from the author in her own words, a brief biography: Olga Tokarczuk (b. 1962) is a Polish writer who is known for her constellation-style novels that bend and challenge traditional methods of story telling. She’s also known for rich and imaginative explorations of Polish history—perhaps best exemplified by her 900-plus page novel, The Books of Jacob.

In her work, despite the new ways she pushes the novel as a form, you’ll find the influence of some of the oldest forms of storytelling, myths and fables. She has also been deeply influenced by the sciences, including psychology, evolution, ecology, and astronomy.

In total, she has written 10 novels, and Flights was her seventh. It was published in Poland in 2007, but it took 10 years for an English translation to come out. Publishers readily acknowledged her originality, but they weren’t sure how readers would respond to her constellation style of storytelling. (i.e. Will people buy something that doesn’t have a cookie-cutter plot?). 

For Flights, Tokarczuk won Poland’s top literary prize, the Nike award, and the Man Booker International Prize (along with her translator Jennifer Croft). She’s won a number of other awards as well, most notably, of course, the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018. 

Before becoming a writer, Tokarczuk studied psychology and worked as a clinical psychologist, an experience she credits with helping shape her perspective as a writer. 

Now, in her own words…