I decided to write a crime novel. That genre was at the height of its popularity in Poland, so I thought it might earn me a bit of cash to go on with my work on ‘The Books of Jacob.’ I shut myself away for a few months and devoted myself entirely to ‘Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.’ Olga Tokarczuk Read Quote
Poland was once a powerful imperial country that disappeared from maps of Europe for more than 100 years. It was partitioned and occupied by the Nazis and the Russians… We pop up and disappear and we do not trust what we are told to believe. Olga Tokarczuk Read Quote
Two centuries ago, when our nation lost its sovereignty and was partitioned among Russia, Prussia and Austria, Polish Romantics like the poet and nationalist Adam Mickiewicz declared that independence would come only with great sacrifice. Ever since, this myth of the martyr, or messianic victim, has emerged during times of national crisis. Olga Tokarczuk Read Quote
There is no official censorship in literature, but I feel a certain fear when I see that a kind of self-censorship is developing in Poland. Authors are somehow afraid of expressing what they really think or feel because they fear political consequences. Olga Tokarczuk Read Quote
I think that first-person narration is very characteristic of contemporary optics, in which the individual performs the role of subjective center of the world. Olga Tokarczuk Read Quote
I write books to open people’s minds, to present new perspectives, to make people realize that what they think is obvious is not so obvious, that you can look at a trivial situation from a different angle and suddenly reveal other meanings and levels. Olga Tokarczuk Read Quote
I think the deepest level of our freedom is being able to change our identity. Olga Tokarczuk Read Quote
Seeing everything means recognizing the ultimate fact that all things that exist are mutually connected into a single whole, even if the connections between them are not yet known to us. Olga Tokarczuk Read Quote