Saturday, February 22 – 4:00pm
At the Instituto Italiano di Cultura (Suite 500-510 W Hastings St)
THE AUTHOR:
Olga Tokarczuk was born in 1962 in Sulechów near Zielona Góra, Poland. A recipient of all of Poland’s top literary awards, she is one of the most critically acclaimed authors of her generation. After finishing her psychology degree at the University of Warsaw, she initially practiced as a therapist and often cites C.G. Jung as an inspiration for her work, in which mythmaking has become a hallmark. Since the publication of her first book in 1989, a collection of poems, Tokarczuk has published ten volumes of stories, novellas, and novels, and one book-length essay(on Boleslaw Prus’s novel The Doll. In English her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, as has her novel House of Day, House of Night. In 1998 Tokarczuk moved to a small village near the Czech border and now divides her time between there and Wroclaw. For her latest novel, Bieguni [The Runners], she received Poland’s top book award, the Nike Prize, in 2008.