Moving into the dark: Olga Tokarczuk

With her work, Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk has won the International Man Booker Prize, but she is also highly controversial in her home country. Her critical approach on Polish history, shedding a light on the darker chapters of the country, has led to smear campaigns by Polish politicans and right wing groups. Program editor Anne-Marijn Epker speaks with Tokarczuk about the Dutch edition of her latest work The Books of Jacob and we reflect together with Polish-Dutch journalist and writer Dore van Duivenbode on Tokarczuk’s fiction, life and current developments in Poland.

Many consider Olga Tokarczuk, author of eleven popularly and critically acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction, to be the most important Polish writer of her generation. In her twelfth book, The Books of Jacob, Tokarczuk searches for Jacob Frank, a highly controversial historical figure and the leader of a mysterious, heretical Jewish splinter group that converted at different times to both Islam and Catholicism.