Poland declares free transport for readers of Nobel laureate

Public transport will be free through the weekend for anyone carrying a book by Poland’s newly minted Nobel literature laureate Olga Tokarczuk in her western city of Wroclaw, local officials said Friday.

‘As soon as we heard the news Thursday that Olga Tokarczuk won the Nobel, we wanted to share our joy with all the residents of our city which recently made the writer an honorary citizen,’ city hall spokesman Przemyslaw Galecki told AFP.

‘Through Sunday, every passenger carrying a book or e-book by Olga Tokarczuk can ride public transit free in our city’ of 650,000 people.

Tokarczuk, 57, splits her time between Wroclaw and the western village of Krajanow on the border with the Czech Republic.

The dreadlock-sporting vegetarian and leftist, who does not shy away from criticising Poland’s governing conservatives, said in June that Wroclaw is ‘one of the most beautiful and important cities of Europe.’

Tokarczuk on Thursday won the 2018 Nobel literature prize, which had been delayed by one year over a sexual harassment scandal, ‘for a narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life,’ the Swedish Academy said Thursday.