The New Yorker:

The Warsaw Book Fair takes place each May in the National Stadium, a basketlike structure flecked with the red and white of the Polish flag. On a bright Saturday morning, hundreds of orange balloons given out by an audiobook company bobbed from children’s hands, and crowds of readers browsed the booths of publishers from across Europe. The National Fryderyk Chopin Institute had a grand piano at its booth, and a young woman played “Bohemian Rhapsody.” At a pop-up bookstore, a clerk with long brown hair and hipster glasses obligingly showed a customer a copy of “Forever Butt,” a queer-magazine anthology (“pocket-sized, pink and super gay”). A long line of people snaked out of the booth of the venerable publishing house Wydawnictwo Literackie and around several of the other displays. They were waiting for a signing by Olga Tokarczuk, who in recent years has established herself as Poland’s preëminent novelist and is frequently mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Tokarczuk herself was outside: crowds make her anxious, and she was steeling herself. After staying out late the night before, she had had trouble sleeping. Tokarczuk, who is fifty-seven, is petite and striking, with the focussed energy of a yoga teacher. She favors artfully draped clothing and layered bracelets. Her long brown hair was twisted into dreadlocks, threaded with blue beads and piled on top of her head. Her mouth is often pursed in a wry smile.

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