Nobel Prize-Winning Author Olga Tokarczuk

Name: Nobel Prize-Winning Author Olga Tokarczuk
Start: 2026-10-08T19:00:00+02:00
End: 2026-10-08T20:30:00+02:00
Location: Kurhaus Bad Mergentheim

took place · 8 Oct 2026

Kurhaus Bad Mergentheim, Germany

lecture date culture

Nobel Prize-Winning Author Olga Tokarczuk — Kurhaus Bad Mergentheim, Bad Mergentheim

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Description was written before the event

On the Silesian Magic Mountain - read by Johann von Bülow

Olga Tokarczuk, the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, comes to Bad Mergentheim - and her latest novel Empuzja fits perfectly with the venue: the story is set in a spa town.

Specifically, it is a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients in Lower Silesia in 1913. Tokarczuk draws on Thomas Mann's classic with considerable wit: a young student arrives from Lviv with tuberculosis and checks into a guesthouse for gentlemen, where lofty philosophizing about women is the norm - until the women begin to strike back in their own way. The FAZ writes: "Wildly brilliant, wildly funny, wildly well written."

Beatrice Faßbender moderates the evening, Empuzja translator Lisa Palmes provides interpretation, and actor Johann von Bülow reads.

A cooperation with the Bad Mergentheim Spa Administration, with kind support from Lions Club Bad Mergentheim, the Polish Institute Düsseldorf, and the Kulturwerk Schlesien Foundation.

About: Olga Tokarczuk

Nobel laureate and Poland's most internationally celebrated novelist, Tokarczuk has spent three decades building an oeuvre that ranges from mythical family sagas to feminist horror - her books translated into nearly 40 languages and awarded prizes on three continents.

~40

languages her works have been translated into

5×

Nike Audience Award wins (Poland's top literary prize)

national bestseller in Poland for nearly a year (The Books of Jacob)

What's new

2026-06
Tokarczuk announced her forthcoming novel - set in post-war Lower Silesia and described as her last major work of fiction - is due for publication in autumn 2026.
2026-05
Tokarczuk sparked public debate after remarks at the Impact'26 conference in Poznań about using AI as a research tool; she subsequently clarified that none of her texts were written with AI assistance.
2025-09
Tokarczuk was appointed Vice President of PEN International at the organisation's 91st Congress in Kraków.

Tracks

Księgi Jakubowe (The Books of Jacob)Regarded as her magnum opus; 2014 Polish bestseller for nearly a year, Nike Prize winner, shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.

Bieguni (Flights)Won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize - the first Polish novel to win the award.

Prawiek i inne czasy (Primeval and Other Times)Her 1996 breakthrough novel; a mythical multi-generational family saga set in a symbolic Polish village.

Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead)Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Translated Literature; adapted into the film Spoor (2017).

Empuzjon (The Empusium)Her first novel post-Nobel (2022/2024 in English); a feminist horror set in a 1913 Silesian sanatorium, winner of the 2024 Europese Literatuurprijs.

Nobel Prize-Winning Author Olga Tokarczuk

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