The war in Ukraine proves that humanity has learned nothing from its own mistakes, Nobel laureate Olga Tokarchuk said on Saturday, admitting that nine months later she is still in shock and unable to find a voice to talk about the conflict.
“I’ve been in shock since February 23 and I don’t know what testimony I can give to what’s happening,” said the Polish writer, admitting that he still hasn’t found “the voice of a sensitive narrator.” His books allow him to achieve a global view of the topics he deals with in his writing.
A sensitive narrator in himself, he sees the effects of the war on “family separation” or “nature itself”, but, not being “a politician or an analyst”, the writer admits: “still can’t catch his voice” and talks about it. A war of “few people know everything that’s going on”.
Folio – at the Óbidos International Literature Festival – the writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018 wanted to talk about books and the creative process today. .
“The theme seems to me and is very stubborn, very irresponsible”, he shared with the Folio audience today to justify that he will not write about Óbidos or about the festival in which he participated for the first time.
The author, who proposed today to talk about “limits”, fulfilled his promise to “quickly” in a conversation of more than an hour “beyond the limits and talk about other topics, including the different perspectives that the Portuguese and the Poles have on the borders”.
“We are in a country where borders were defined 800 years ago,” he said, recalling that “borders are always moving” in his country and that “his grandmother, who always lived in the same city, had three nationalities.”
As a child, the “incontinence” that led her to repeatedly “cross” the border of the Czech Republic, was transformed into writing as an adult, in her case it was “obsessed”, “as the voice of the narrator who has no” gender “.
At the event that gathered about 200 people today to listen to the writer, Olga Tokarchuk leaves “a salute to the reader”, whom she always considers “smarter than the writer”, and “a compliment to the new profession” of literary bloggers who have done more democratic literary criticism.
Olga Tokarchuk’s schedule for today’s show at Folio, which runs until the 16th at 24 locations in Obidos, is over.
For 11 days, around 300 teachers from ten countries will participate in the festival, including 16 exhibitions, 36 concerts, 14 teacher tables, 62 presentations and book launches, 16 workshops, meetings, workshops and masterclasses and film sessions. Many other attempts.
“Hardcore explorer. Extreme communicator. Professional writer. General music practitioner. Prone to fits of apathy.”