Man Booker prize 2018 won by Polish author

More than 100 novels were submitted for the 2018 Man Booker International award and Olga Tokarczuk has become the first Polish writer to win the prize for a story that moves from ‘wit and and gleeful mischief to real emotional texture’ “Flights,” a novel that charts multiple journeys in time, space and human anatomy.

Olga Tokarczuk is one of Poland’s best known authors and has written eight novels and two collections of short stories. She has been criticized by Polish conservatives and received death threats for criticizing aspects of the country’s past, including aspects of the anti-Semitism.

Flights has been described as a novel of linked fragments from the 17th century to the present day. The chairperson of the five judge panel, Lisa Appignanesi said “It isn’t a traditional narrative” and pointing to Tokararczuk’s own description of her writing as a “constellation novels” to describe an author who throws her stories into orbit, allowing her readers to form meaningful shapes from them.”

In Flights, brilliantly translated by Jennifer Croft, by a series of startling juxtapositions she flies us through a galaxy of departure and arrrivals, stories and digressions, all while exploring matters close to the contemporary and human predicament.”

The Polish novelist takes £50,000 prize and the book’s translator, Jennifer Croft, will receive half the cash prize. Tokarczuk and Croft had also received £1,000 for being shortlisted.