OLGA TOKARCZUK

Olga Tokarczuk, born in 1962, is one of the most popular contemporary writers in Poland. She studied psychology at the University of Warsaw. She is a devotee of Jung, an authority on philosophy and arcane knowledge. She leaves in Wałbrzych, a city in South-Western Poland, near Czech and German boarders where she established her own publishing house which in the 1990s published some of her books.

She has twice won the Reader's Prize of the NIKE literary award a numerous other prizes. A prize winning play has also been based on Prawiek i Inne Czasy. She has written 4 novels and three books of short stories. Her most recent novel House of Day, House of Night apeared in English translation.

In the several years after the publication of her first novel The Journey of the People of the Book, and following the success with both readers and critics alike of Prawiek and Other Times, Olga Tokarczuk has become one of the most highly esteemed writers of the younger generation. Her last novel House of Day, House of Night is composed as a diary in which the author inscribes a series of narrative sequences, which, when assembled, form a strikingly authentic and relevant whole.

Along with stories about particular characters and their inspired, exceptional destinies, we are also presented with a sequence of digressions, in which hints about internet surfing, accounts of dreams, and recipes for toadstools stand on equal footing alongside fragments of apocrypha and philosophical treatises, details from the lives of lizards, and the sort of neighbourhood gossip that circulates in rural, closed societies.

In The House of Day, The House of Night Tokarczuk describes her present "house," her home, the village of Nowa Ruda in the Sudety; but if we look under the surface we will see that she is dealing here with much more - with the reality that we all share.

At the same time, she works with categories made popular by Carl Gustav Jung's philosophy of archetypes: "the 'House of Day' is the reality we perceive in wakefulness; the 'House of Night' is dream, the world's imaginary side, the homeland of archetypes, which, as a Jungian, Tokarczuk strongly believes in."

The author emphasizes the multifarious qualities of time and being, and determines that life is subject above all to constant change: Life is a dream, and the dream is life. The presentation of the past, the present, and the future is closely related to dream - to the world's imaginary side - to mythology and legends; and it provides us with a mode of perceiving reality in newer, subtler ways. Olga Tokarczuk combines in her writing philosophical knowledge with a remarkable skill at literary narrative.

Olga Tokarczuk is probably the most internationally popular of the young generation of Polish writers. Her books have been translated into French, English, Czech, Danish, German, Lithuanian, Spanish and Catalan.

Tokarczuk won the hearts of her readers with long, complex, mysterious narratives. Yet for quite a while she keeps them waiting, sparingly publishing another collection of short stories. The Last Stories which appeared in 2004 confirm her talent and unusual gift of seeing thing which others fail to notice or refuse to accept. Yet we all hope that the short stories are just sketches she made while working on a bigger canvas.

To read extracts from The House of Day, House of Night then click here Olga Tomarczuk

Excerpts from Olga Tokarczuk's House of Day, House of Night were translated by Kim Jastremski and read by Peter Gentle.