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Olga Tokarczuk is the winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature and the Man Booker International Prize, for her novel Flights. She has received many other honours, including her country Poland’s highest literary award, the Nike, for both Flights and The Books of Jacob. Her novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was also highly praised. She is the author of more than a dozen works of fiction, a children’s book and two collections of essays. Her work has been translated into more than fifty languages. Widely regarded as one of the most important writers of her generation, she lives in Poland.
‘One among a very few signal European novelists of the past quarter-century.’ -- Economist ‘A potent blend of horror tropes and literary references (Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann)...Readers will find much to savour.’ * Publishers Weekly * ‘A magnificent writer.’ -- Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize in Literature laureate 2015 ‘The Nobel Prize winner’s trippy new novel fuses folk horror with mystery and comedy. In a Silesian health resort in 1913, a Polish student and his fellow patients have circular, misogynistic debates fuelled by hallucinogenic local liqueur. Meanwhile, rumours swirl about mysterious deaths and woodland rituals. Tokarczuk reinvents Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain within the current tread for wellness retreat thrillers, weaving a portrait of pre-war Europe that is also an eerie feminist parable.’ * Bookseller UK * ‘A dark, feminist novel—atmospheric, creepy, and absolutely perfect.’ * LitHub * ’The Empusium is an emphatic triumph—a feast of culture, both literary and popular, highbrow and low, that shows Tokarczuk writing at the peak of her powers and enjoying every moment of it…I was in thrall to this from the first page.’ * Bram Presser, Sydney Morning Herald * ‘Deft and disturbing…In Antonia Lloyd-Jones’ crisp translation, Tokarczuk tells a folk horror story with a deceptively light and knowing tone…Elegant and genuinely unsettling.’ * New York Times * ‘An odd, fascinating book—a blackly serious joke—from an author of great daring and intelligence…The writing, in a cultivated translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, shared the easygoing gait and twinkling irony of Mann’s novel…It makes for absorbing if often mystifying reading, but what stands out most is the philosophical conflict it stages between rationality and folk belief.’ * Wall Street Journal * ‘In Tokarczuk’s hands, the staid genre of the bildungsroman erupts with sinister possibility.’ * Washington Post * ‘A novel that in Tokarczuk’s dexterous hands transcends its own limits, further cementing the Nobel laureate as one of the most original storytellers of our age.’ * Financial Times * ‘The Nobel Laureate’s bloody and moody fairy tale will blow your mind…Tokarczuk keeps the suspense at a low boil throughout, balancing moments of terror and revolution…Until the horror and the beauty can no longer be contained, that is, and erupt into the novel’s utterly sublime conclusion. As ever, Tokarczuk’s prose—and Antonia Lloyd-Jones’ glorious translation thereof from the Polish—will knock the wind out of you…If The Empusium soars during its descriptions of stuff and setting—the witchy forest that surrounds the sick house especially seduces.’ * San Francisco Chronicle * ‘Tokarczuk’s newest masterpiece is positioned to be the book of the fall. From mystery drinks and deaths to commentary upon religion and gender, this book is the literary horror story that eagerly awaits your Autumn reading list…With fall chills fast approaching, there is no better book to read. A magnificently haunting portrayal of health, death, and all that comes in between, The Empusium is one of Tokarczuk’s best works to date.’ * Chicago Review of Books * ‘Tokarczuk’s deft, dark satirical wit is on full display in The Empusium…Tokarczuk, as usual, casts her enthralling spell.’ * BookPage *
