Olga Tokarczuk

Polish writer, activist, and public intellectual who 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, becoming the first Polish writer to do so. Before starting her literary career, from 1980 she trained as a psychologist at the University of Warsaw. After her graduation in 1985, she moved first to Wrocław and later to Wałbrzych, where she began practising as a therapist. Tokarczuk considers herself a disciple of Carl Jung and cites his psychology as an inspiration for her literary work. Since 1998, Tokarczuk has lived in a small village near Nowa Ruda, from where she also manages her private publishing company Ruta.

She has shown interest and knowledge of astrology in some of her works. The hero of her novel Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is an astrologer, living in the same kind of remote place as Olga Tokarczuk lives, near the Czek border.

She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2018 (awarded in 2019.