INTERVIEW
In awarding the Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature for her novel The Jakob's Books , the Swedish Academy has come to reward hard, precise, almost obsessive work. At the microphone of Nicolas Carreau, the laureate of 57 years told his report to literature and its award, awarded with a postponement of one year after the scandal that had splashed the Institution.
"I feel like my life is going to change"
The consecration first had the taste of "disbelief" for Olga Tokarczuk. Then it was a "huge joy". "I feel like my life is going to change now, no doubt, are we going to read my books a lot more, and maybe I'll have a lot more obligations," says the writer, who was crowned micro of Europe 1.
However, his novel, published in Poland in 2014, then internationally in 2018, had already conquered critics and readers. The book - an odyssey of more than 1,000 pages - tells the story of Jakob Frank, a historical figure who crossed the Enlightenment Europe in a breathtaking and sulphurous way, as a new messiah, converted to Islam and then to Catholicism, training his disciples in a sort of sect. Olga Tokarczuk recalls - along with the life of her character - the history of Jewish Poland, the way of life of the time, the everyday life of people, ranging from small beauties to miserable aspects. All with skill and a method of the most rigorous.
Heard on europe1:
It took me about eight years to write this book. Half is documentation, preparation, research
The Nobel jury also emphasized this aspect, praising his "encyclopedic passion". "I think that an attentive reader can see in my books how much I prepare," adds the writer. For Les Pérégrins for example (novel published in Poland in 2007), I spent a lot of time studying anatomy. "But this meticulousness, this concern to transcribe the reality was even more pushed for the books of Jakob ." It took me about eight years to write this book. Half is documentation, preparation, research. I was trying to get to the information I forgot today. I had to travel to be able to describe this very exotic time ", dissects the one that does not reject the obsessional qualifier." The obsession is something important in the writing. I think this is the only thing that allows us to continue writing, "she says, regretting in parallel the very solitary aspect of the life of writer.
Psychologist writer
This job has not always been his. Surrounded by a mother professor of literature, she had turned to psychology. It nevertheless finds close links between the two domains. And some differences that were fundamental in her choices: according to her, psychology is linked to a potentiality, when the literature presents a result. Psychology is a way to find one's "own way", when literature devotes "the words of others".
Olga Tokarczuk first chose her own path. She became a psychologist, until a sort of burn-out stopped her and she decided, almost overnight, to take "a sabbatical year" to devote herself to her first book. "The success in the literature is something quite exceptional, but I wanted to take that risk." She thought that she could always return to her job as a psychologist. And then, his first novel was "very well received, rewarded". To definitely take him to the side of literature.