The winner of the 2018 Man Booker International Prize is Flights by Olga Tokarczuk.
Connected by themes of travel and human anatomy, Flights is a novel of linked fragments from the 17th century to the present day. The five panel judges chaired by Lisa Appignanesi OBE chose Tokarczuk’s novel from a group of 108 submissions.
About the winner, Appignanesi wrote “Tokarczuk is a writer of wonderful wit, imagination and literary panache. In Flights, brilliantly translated by Jennifer Croft, by a series of startling juxtapositions she flies us through a galaxy of departures and arrivals, stories and digressions, all the while exploring matters close to the contemporary and human predicament – where only plastic escapes mortality.”
Considering both novels and short stories, the prize is awarded annually to a work of English translation and published in the United Kingdom. The £50,000 prize is divided equally between the author and the translator.
(Bonus links: an essay on what can be lost in translation).
