Tokarczuk was born 1962 in Sulechów in Poland, and today lives in Wrocław. She made her debut as a fiction writer 1993 with Podróż ludzi Księgi (The Journey of the Book-People). Her breakthrough came with her third novel in 1996 Prawiek i inne czasy (Primeval and Other Times, 2010). The novel is an “excellent example of new Polish literature after 1989”, said the Academy and added her 2014 historical novel Księgi Jakubowe (The Books of Jacob) “showed the supreme capacity of the novel to represent a case almost beyond human understanding.”

The Academy added: “Tokarczuk never views reality as something stable or everlasting. She constructs her novels in a tension between cultural opposites; nature versus culture, reason versus madness, male versus female, home versus alienation.”

Gratulacje Pani Olgo!