The reading process and the role of the reader in a stylistic analysis of “Flights” in Olga Tokarczuk’s novel flights

Abstract

Flights (2017), the English translation of the novel Bieguni (2007), was written by the Polish writer and psychologist Olga Tokarczuk. Author of eight novels and two short-story collections, she has received one of the most prestigious prizes for Polish literature: the Nike 2008 Literary Award for her literary work Bieguni. Although Olga Tokarczuk has been a best-selling author in Poland for decades, she was not well known outside her homeland until she became the country’s first author to win the Man Booker International Prize in 2018 for Flights. She was also awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life” (Nobel Prize Outreach, 2021). Another important figure besides Olga Tokarczuk is the translator of Flights named Jennifer Croft, an American author, critic and translator, who translates from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentine Spanish. For the translation of this novel, she has won the Found in Translation Award, an annual award for the best translation of Polish literature into English (The Polish Book Institute, 2018).