Tip of my tongue

Shifting borders, an enigmatic informant, a bearded lady and dubious fungi combine in an imaginative meander.

- BY MARCUS HOBSON

Polish writer, activist and intellectual Olga Tokarczuk has the most fertile imagination, creating a world from the objects of everyday life. In this publication of one of her early novels, she invents a typology for one of her characters. A system of classification where “people are like the ground they live on, whether they like it or not”. People born on sandy soil are dogged, holding belligerently on to life, while those born near water are soft, fragile and sensitive. Those born on rock have hard exteriors but are hollow inside.

Tokarczuk has acquired a huge worldwide following since winning the 2018 Nobel Prize for literature, the same year she also won the International Booker Prize for her novel Flights. She has twice won the Nike Award, Poland's top literary prize. In 2022, the English translation of The Book of Jacob was published, running to nearly 1000 pages and taking seven years to translate. A long wait is common for English versions of her novels, with House of Day, House of Night first being published in Poland in 1998.