Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk born January 29 1962) is a Polish novelist, poet, and psychologist. A public intellectual she has been described as one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful authors of her generation, In 2018, she won the Man Booker International Prize for her novel Flights (translated by Jennifer Croft), becoming the first Polish writer to do so. In 2019, she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Tokarczuk is particularly noted for the mythical tone of her writing. She trained as a psychologist at the University of Warsaw and published a collection of poems, several novels, as well as other books with shorter prose works. Flights won the Nike Award, Poland’s top literary prize, in 2008. She attended the 2010 Edinburgh Book Festival to discuss her book Primeval and Other Times and other work. With her novel Księgi Jakubowe (The Books of Jacob), Tokarczuk won the Nike Award again in 2015. In the same year, Tokarczuk received the German-Polish International Bridge Prize, a recognition extended to persons especially accomplished in the promotion of peace, democratic development and mutual understanding among the people and nations of Europe.