“Nobel” Woman And Fierce Feminist Olga Tokarczuk Has a Connection With India

In one of her press interactions on October 10, 2019, the day she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature, Polish author Olga Tokarczuk said that she wanted to celebrate her win with a dinner.

 

“I am going to drink wine and eat good Indian food,” she had said in an interview.

 

It is fascinating, strange even, how a Central European native wanted to commemorate the ultimate accolade of her life with the cuisine of a faraway land; a place where a majority of the literate population speak Hindi, while only 10% speak English.

 

But stranger still is the fact that even before her 2007 novel Flights was published in English in 2018, many Hindi book readers were already familiar with Olga’s work; three of her short stories were available in Hindi since 2014.

 

This connection is established by her literature that appeals to a universal audience as she writes from a woman’s point of view, according to Maria Puri, a resident of Delhi who developed a deep appreciation for Tokarczuk’s writing and has been translating her work since 2013.

 

The Swedish Academy postponed the announcement for the coveted literature award last year in the wake of a sexual harassment and assault scandal. This deadlock finally cleared when in the Polish writer, the Nobel committee found not only a winner but also a dreadlocked feminist.

 

Though for over three decades she has been la étoile in her own country, she made her international breakthrough by winning the Man Booker International Prize 2018 for Flights.

 

It is, however, in her dark comedy novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead that we see nuances of her feminist notions through the ageing protagonist, Janina, who is on a quest to solve a murder mystery in a society concocted with power, money and patriarchy.

 

An outspoken feminist herself, Olga Tokarczuk is the winner that contemporary literature deserves.