Today our problem lies—it seems—in the fact that we do not yet have ready narratives not only for the future, but even for a concrete now, for the ul… - Olga Tokarczuk

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Today our problem lies—it seems—in the fact that we do not yet have ready narratives not only for the future, but even for a concrete now, for the ultra-rapid transformations of today’s world. We lack the language, we lack the points of view, the metaphors, the myths and new fables. Yet we do see frequent attempts to harness rusty, anachronistic narratives that cannot fit the future to imaginaries of the future, no doubt on the assumption that an old something is better than a new nothing, or trying in this way to deal with the limitations of our own horizons. In a word, we lack new ways of telling the story of the world.

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About Olga Tokarczuk

Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk (born 29 January 1962) is a Polish writer, activist and public intellectual. She is one of the most critically acclaimed and successful authors of her generation in Poland; in 2019, she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Polish female prose writer. For her novel Flights, Tokarczuk has been awarded the 2018 Man Booker International Prize.

Also Known As

Native Name: Olga Nawoja Tokarczuk
Alternative Names: Natasza Borodin
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Additional quotes by Olga Tokarczuk

Reportage is the prince of Polish literature. Love for reportage is a request from the readers: Tell us how it is in the world, what the truth is, don’t make anything up. I’m very concerned about this resistance to literary imagination. People lose the ability to understand metaphors, transposition, all other stylistic literary devices used to date.

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And of course, literature is a very specific way of understanding the world and very specific and very raffinated, special, sophisticated way of communication. So, I would like, in my writing, I would like to try just a kind of general ideas of instruction, how to deal with those very dangerous things connected with climate changes. So, please understand that I am not an activist. This is what I’m going to say. I’m going to write about it in my own language, in using my imagination to make our consciousness broader.

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