‘Flight’ wins Man Booker prize

AN ENGLISH translation of the Polish novel Flights, which interweaves narratives of travel with explorations of the human body, has won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize.

The novel by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft, won the £50 000 (R835 000) prize from a shortlist of six.

The money will be split between the author and translator.

“Tokarczuk is a writer of wonderful wit, imagination and literary panache,” said head judge Lisa Appignanesi at the ceremony in London.

“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.”

Flights recounts a sheaf of stories on Tokarczuk’s theme, including the 17th century tale of Dutch anatomist Philip Verheyen, who dissected and drew his own amputated leg, and the 19th century story of Chopin’s heart as it makes the covert journey from Paris to Warsaw after his death.

The Guardian called it “a passionate and enchantingly discursive plea for meaningful connectedness, for the acceptance of ‘fluidity, mobility, illusoriness’”.

“The book’s prose is a lucid medium in which narrative crystals grow to an ideal size, independent structures not disturbing the balance of the whole,” wrote Adam Mars-Jones in the London Review of Books.

The prize celebrates English translations of works of international literature. —