Olga Tokarczuk (born 1962), Poland.
Tokarczuk is the daughter of two teachers who were resettled from the former eastern regions of Poland (now part of Belarus and Ukraine); one of her grandmothers was Ukrainian, and the surname ending in -czuk is a Polish spelling of a typical Ukrainian name. She published her first short stories when she was 17, under a pseudonym. She studied clinical psychology at the University of Warsaw (founded in 1816 - Jagiellonian University in Kraków (Cracow) is older, founded in 1364) and worked as a psychotherapist for years while pubilshing poetry and reviews. She eventually quit to concentrate on writing and running a publishing house (1998-2004) and has enjoyed literary fellowships in the US (1996) and Berlin (2001-2). She cites Carl Jung as an inspiration for her literary work.
Tokarczuk has won a number of literary prizes, most notably the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2018 (though due to a scandal at Nobel Central the prize was awarded in 2019). She invested part of the prize money (which is closer to $1,000,000) in a new foundation meant to support educational projects, writing contests, and scholarships for emerging writers. Her politics are leftist, and she has frequently declared that she is a feminist, at a time when that has not been in fashion in Poland. Besides her literary writing, she is an activist and a public intellectual.
I was tempted at first to assign the epic Books of Jacob, but the book weighs in at 912 pages. Ask for the book as a gift the next time a gift-giving opportunity presents itself!
Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead (Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych, 2009) is translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones - she and another of Tokarczuk's translators into English (Jennifer Croft) are among the several well-regarded Anglophone translators from Polish. The novel was adapted for film in 2017 by Agnieszka Holland (Pokot, meaning "Spoor") and won a nice prize at the Berlin Film Festival. Note that Janina's last name, Duszejko, is pronounced "Doo-shay-ko." The word dusza in Polish means "soul" or "spirit."
Questions for reading:
Other books by Tokarczuk:
Works about Tokarczuk or with a connection to her: Since she won the Nobel Prize, there are lots of reviews and articles, but so far it seems no books.
Are you a reader of mysteries - or perhaps philosophical mysteries?