All about Olga

It has been very long time since I've read a writer who I've enjoyed, admired, and learned so much from. My friend, Victoria, recommended her book Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead, quite a title and an amazing book.  

 There is so much to say about Olga Tokarczuk but this blog isn't a dissertation so I am giving you links below.  She is a writer of place and lives in south western Poland in a medieval region near the border with Czechoslovakia which was once Bohemia. She was awarded the Nobel for 2018 and the Booker Prize for her experimental novel that she calls a constellation novel, Flights.

So, tonight I will be reading House of Day House of Night which will mean I have read everything she has written that has been translated into English, including a short story I found in the anthology Elsewhere. And I will have to wait  for the translation of her Books of Jacob, which is frequently referred to as her masterpiece which comes out in 2021.

From  her Nobel lecture, The Tender Narrator:

I also dream of a new kind of narrator―a “fourth-person” one, who is not merely a grammatical construct of course, but who manages to encompass the perspective of each of the characters, as well as having the capacity to step beyond the horizon of each of them, who sees more and has a wider view, and who is able to ignore time. Oh yes, I think this narrator’s existence is possible.

Here are some links to follow:

Her Nobel lecture: The Tender Narrator,
Olga on Poland
Interview with Olga about her novel Flights
Interview Absorb Stories



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