2018 Literature Nobel Prize awarded to Polish author Olga Tokarczuk

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018 has been awarded to Polish author Olga Tokarczuk "for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life", the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement on Thursday. The 2018 prize was delayed by one year after a sexual assault scandal rocked the award-giving Academy.

Olga Tokarczuk was born 1962 in Sulechów in Poland, and today lives in Wrocław. After studies in psychology at the University of Warsaw she made her debut as a fiction writer 1993 with Podróz ludzi Księgi ("The Journey of the Book-People"), set in 17th century France and Spain where the characters are in search of a mysterious book in the Pyrenees. The book was well received and was awarded the Polish Publisher's Prize for the best debut 1993-94.

Still, her real breakthrough came with her third novel Prawiek i inne czasy 1996 (Primeval and Other Times, 2010). This subtly built family saga in several succeeding generations is set in a mythical place with strong symbolical impact, while, at the same time, being full of realistic and vivid details.

Still, the magnum opus of Tokarczuk so far is the impressive historical novel Księgi Jakubowe 2014 ("The Books of Jacob"). She has in this work showed the supreme capacity of the novel to represent a case almost beyond human understanding.

BREAKING NEWS:The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018 is awarded to the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk. The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2019 is awarded to the Austrian author Peter Handke.#NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/CeKNz1oTSB

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 10, 2019

The Nobel Prize for achievements in science, peace, and literature have been awarded since 1901 and were created in the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel. The prize in Literature is given to, in the words of the will of Alfred Nobel: "the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction."