ABSTRACT
Olga Tokarczuk (b. 1962) is a major contemporary literary figure specializing in short literary forms, but also a novelist and poet. She is a psychologist by training, but now a full-time writer. Tokarczuk won the 2008 Nike 1 prize for Bieguni (Runners), a novel interweaving various stories united by travel. She lives in Dolny Śląsk (Lower Silesia) and, besides travelling and giving readings, leads creative writing seminars at the university in Opole. Her most popular work to date is Prawiek i inne czasy (Primeval and Other Times, 1996), which documents eighty years of life, beginning in 1914, in a fictional village in the heart of Poland. Her 2000 short story ‘Żurek’ (White Barszcz) was turned into a major motion picture. Tokarczuk is not especially a writer of science fiction, but it is difficult to say whether the present story fits into that genre anyway (this can be one of the points of discussion). https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315883724/f1ec34ee-0050-45f0-bb21-227ec0c07bdd/content/ufig18_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
