The book is called Świata jest za dużo – roughly, "There Is Too Much World" – and is being billed as the last major novel of her career.
It is due out on 14 October from Polish publisher Wydawnictwo Literackie.
Tokarczuk read the opening lines at the launch of the Mountains of Literature Festival at Sarny Castle in Ścinawka Górna, in the Kłodzko Valley of south-western Poland, where she lives.
The extract follows a bomb dropped over a Polish city in January 1945, tracing its view of the ground below as it falls: streets "trying clumsily to disguise itself beneath snow-covered rooftops," a river "glistening" between the ruins, an airfield "desperately built in the heart of the city."
[Translated by Polish Radio; the original text is in Polish.]
Waldemar Popek, deputy editor-in-chief at Wydawnictwo Literackie, who has worked with Tokarczuk for more than two decades, said the novel carried her hallmarks – a wide creative sweep, an eye for the overlooked and close attention to detail.
He said it moved beyond a human-centred viewpoint to shed new light on the mass migrations that followed border changes at the end of World War II.
According to Popek, the novel is centred on Lower Silesia, in particular the cities of Wrocław and Wałbrzych, though its scope extends far beyond Poland, reaching Argentina's Buenos Aires, Italy's Trieste and Drohobycz, in present-day Ukraine.
The publisher describes the novel as Tokarczuk's most personal to date, calling Lower Silesia the stage for "one of the largest social experiments in European history."
Wydawnictwo Literackie said the story also travels along the Dniester and Oder rivers, moving between decades and centuries, "connecting the past with today."
The book's cover draws on 1940s-style poster design, which Tokarczuk said reflects the novel's themes.
Tokarczuk, 64, won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature – awarded in 2019 – for what the Swedish Academy called "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life."
Her novels translated into English include Flights, which won the 2018 International Booker Prize; Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead; The Books of Jacob; and, most recently, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story.
She has also published collections of short stories and essays, and her work has been translated into more than 40 languages.
Tokarczuk has said the new novel marks the close of a more than 30-year chapter of writing full-length fiction, and that she expects to focus on shorter forms afterwards.
The Mountains of Literature Festival, founded by Tokarczuk and run by her foundation, takes place from 10 to 18 July across venues in Lower Silesia.
(ał)
Source: PAP