THENEWYORKER,AUGUST 5 &12, 2019 21
sections are often linked by just a word
or an image, allowing readers to dis-
cover their own connections. “When
I first submitted it to my publishing
house, they called me back and asked
if perhaps I mixed up the files in my
computer, because this is not a novel,”
she said.
A form based on fragments is partic-
ularly suitable for a novel by an author
from Poland, where national borders
have changed over and over through
the centuries, and where multiple eth-
nic groups—Poles, Ukrainians, Lithu-
anians, Germans, Ruthenians, Jews—
have lived side by side in a cacophony
of languages and experience. Central
European literature generally, Tokar-
czuk believes, “questions reality more.
It’s more distrustful of stable, perma-
nent things.” In “Flights,” a character
says, “Constellation, not sequencing,
carries the truth.”
In Poland, a narrative of history that
embraces fragmentation, diversity, and
intermingling is unavoidably political,
disrupting a long-standing mythology
of the country as a homogeneous Cath-
olic nation. This national mythology
has been ascendant in recent years, es-
pecially since 2015, when the socially
conservative party Law and Justice came
to power, on an anti-immigration “na-
tional unity” platform. Since then, the
government has refused to accept ref-
ugees from the Middle East and North
Africa, resisted instituting equal rights
for same-sex couples, and passed a law
forbidding discussion of Polish collab-
oration with the Nazis during the Sec-
ond World War.
In a recent Op-Ed that appeared in
the Times, Tokarczuk deplored her coun-
try’s political climate: “State television,
from which a significant number of Poles
get their news, consistently smears, in
aggressive and defamatory language,
the political opposition and anyone who
thinks differently from the ruling party.”
Her work often addresses issues on
which she has strong views. A longtime
vegetarian who says that she loses sleep
over the suffering of animals in slaugh-
terhouses and on factory farms, she pub-
lished, in 2009, an unconventional mur-
der mystery with an environmentalist
and animal-rights slant. The book,
“Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of
the Dead,” comes out here in August
from Riverhead, in a translation by An-
tonia Lloyd-Jones, the translator of two
previous novels by Tokarczuk.
Poland, not unlike the United States,
is politically split down the middle. Law
and Justice’s supporters are balanced
by progressives—often younger, city-
dwelling, and living in the western half
of the country—who seek tolerance,
multiculturalism, and a truthful reck-
oning with Poland’s past. These are
Tokarczuk’s readers. “Even my friends
who don’t read a lot, who don’t follow
the latest young poets or writers, they’re
reading Olga Tokarczuk,” Zofia Król,
the editor of the online literary maga-
zine Dwutygodnik, told me.
When Tokarczuk emerged to greet
her readers, all traces of anxiety were
gone from her face, and she chatted
animatedly and posed for selfies at the
signing table. One fan had brought
her a book of drawings of “phantom ar-
chitecture”—designs that were never
built—hoping that it might be a source
of inspiration. A librarian from Prusz-
ków, just outside Warsaw, presented her
with a recently published Polish trans-
lation of a memory book chronicling
the life of the town’s Jewish commu-
nity, which was eradicated in 1941, during
the Nazi occupation.
The signing lasted nearly two hours.
Stepping away from the table afterward,
Tokarczuk groaned and pretended to
collapse. But her eyes were alert. “To
know that people are waiting for the
next book—it gives me energy,” she said.T
okarczuk is based in Wrocław, in
the southwest of Poland. She was
in Warsaw not only for the book fair but
also for a literary festival, called Apos-
trof, which took place at the Universal
Theatre, a headquarters of sorts for in-
tellectuals and artists. This year To-
karczuk was a guest curator, organizing
a weeklong series of symposiums fea-
turing leading Polish writers and intel-
lectuals. She attended nearly every panel,
jotting things down in a small black
notebook and occasionally calling out
suggestions if the speakers seemed at a
loss for ideas. The theme she had cho-
sen was “This Is Not the Only Possible
World.” One discussion focussed on
what a post-religious Poland might look
like. Another was about climate change
and other ecological issues. In lieu of thetraditional bouquet of cut flowers, each
panelist was given a beech sapling as a
token of appreciation.
One night, a group of educators de-
bated the future of the Polish school
system. Piotr Laskowski, a teacher in
his early forties, professed disgust at
the way business had co-opted words
like “creativity” and “innovation.” Until
recently, he’d been the head of a high
school at which most decisions are made
jointly by a vote of students and fac-
ulty. Schools, he said, should aim to free
students from thinking about the labor
market and prepare them instead to
shape the world. Wearing a navy hoodie,
he rocked back and forth with barely
contained energy as he spoke. Tokarczuk
beamed up at him from her customary
seat in the middle of the front row.
After the event, at a gathering in
the theatre’s garden, Tokarczuk intro-
duced Laskowski to me as the man
who ran “the most anarchist school in
the system.”
“It’s not that anarchist, I’m afraid,”
he said.
Tokarczuk took a sip of a diet Fritz-
Kola, a German brand with an intense
caffeine kick. “How free are you to
determine what you tell your pupils?”
she asked.
Law and Justice has introduced a
state-mandated curriculum: history
classes are limited to Polish history,
narrated from a distinctly nationalist
perspective; literature classes empha-
size classics of Polish literature, such
as the historical novels of Henryk Sien-
kiewicz, rather than its great noncon-
formists, such as Witold Gombrowicz
and Bruno Schulz.
Laskowski shrugged. A teacher who
diverges from the official line “won’t get
arrested,” he said, just “intimidated,”
perhaps with a threat of forced retire-
ment. Although this probably wouldn’t
happen in Warsaw, he added, “if you are
a teacher in a very small town or vil-
lage, with a very conservative popula-
tion, with a priest who teaches religion
in the school, then your position changes
radically.” He chuckled grimly.
Among left-leaning people I spoke
to, such talk was common: you could
get away with whatever you were doing,
until one day you couldn’t. Most cul-
tural institutions depend on public
money, which makes them vulnerable