Joanna Bator

Joanna Bator at the Leipzig Book Fair 2016

Joanna Bator (born February 2, 1968 in Wałbrzych , Poland ) is a Polish writer and publicist .

Life

Bator left her hometown Wałbrzych at the age of 19 and studied cultural studies and philosophy in Wroclaw . She received her PhD with a thesis on feminism, postmodernism and psychoanalysis. She worked as a lecturer in philosophy at various universities (Warsaw, New York, London, Tokyo). She has published articles and essays in various magazines including Tygodnik Powszechny , National Geographic, and Voyage . She wrote down the experiences of her three-year stay in Japan in Japoński wachlarz . She is also known as the author of scientific publications. Since 2011 she has been concentrating entirely on her writing. Joanna Bator lives on the tenth floor of a skyscraper in Wilanów in Warsaw.

Joanna Bator has received many awards. In 2013 she received the Nike , the most important Polish literary prize, for her novel Ciemno, prawie noc . In the fall semester of 2014, she held the Friedrich Dürrenmatt visiting professorship for world literature at the University of Bern .

One of the writers she admires and all of whom she has read books is Haruki Murakami .

Works

On a reading tour 2012 at the Taranta Babu in Dortmund

In 2011, Bator's novel Piaskowa Góra was also published in German under the title Sandberg . The title of the novel refers to a block of flats in the mining town of Wałbrzych, from which the author also comes. The headstrong and mathematically gifted girl Dominika grows up in this apartment block, whose life is only told up to the age of eighteen in this novel. At the same time, the book traces their family history. In particular, Dominika's mother Jadzia, a domestic, somewhat narrow-minded woman who is alienated in view of her unusual daughter, is given a lot of space. Dominika's grandmothers, Zofia and Halina, also play important roles. Thanks to the narrative arc spanning three generations, Bator can deal in detail with Polish history not only during the Second World War , but also during socialism and after the fall of the Wall .

While Sandberg entirely focused on Poland, Bator tried in 2013, translated into German continued Chmurdalia ( clouds remote geographical expansion in its history). Dominika, who woke up from a coma at the age of eighteen after an accident at the beginning of the novel, first spends some time in Germany and then travels to the USA to live in New York for a longer period of time . This is followed by stations in London and Greece. The connection to Poland remains alive through the contact with her mother Jadzia, but a large part of the plot takes place outside of the author's homeland. Japan is also brought into play in a secondary line of the plot. In addition to Dominika's development as a young woman, the focus is on the family history of her friend Grażynka, who lives in Germany, the American nurse Sara Jackson and many other people whom Dominika meets on her wandering. Through her extensive travels, Dominika is, so to speak, realizing the search for the utopia of a fantasy land called "Wolkenfern", which was already developed in Sandberg , and can thus leave the "Sandberg" behind.

Publications (selection)

• Feminizm, postmodernizm, psychoanliza. Wydawnictwo Słowo Obraz Terytoria, Gdańsk 2001
• Kobieta. Wydawnictwo Twój Styl, Warszawa 2002, ISBN 83-7163-251-7
• Japoński wax-crystal. Powroty Wydawnictwo Twój Styl, Warszawa 2004
• Piaskowa Góra. Wydawnictwo W. A. ​​B., Warszawa 2009 ISBN 978-83-7414-977-8
  • Translated by Esther Kinsky : Sandberg. Novel . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2011 ISBN 978-3-518-42222-9
• Chmurdalia. Wydawnictwo W. A. ​​B., Warszawa 2010, ISBN 978-83-7414-737-8
  • Translator Esther Kinsky: Wolkenfern. Novel . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2013 ISBN 978-3-518-42405-6
• Ciemno, prawie noc . Wydawnictwo W. A. ​​B., Warszawa 2012 ISBN 978-83-7747-827-1
  • Übers. Lisa Palmes : Dark, almost night: Roman . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2016 ISBN 978-3-518-42497-1
• Lost Words, Lost Worlds: A European language trip . Edition fotoTAPETA, Berlin 2013 ISBN 978-3-940524-20-1
• Rekin z parku Yoyogi . Wydawnictwo W. A. ​​B., Warszawa 2014 ISBN 978-83-7747-975-9
• Wyspa Łza . Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2015 ISBN 978-83-240-3279-2
• Rok królika . Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2016
• Purezento . Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2017 ISBN 978-83-240-5027-7

Prizes and awards

• 2005: Nagroda imienia Beaty Pawlak for Japoński wachlarz
• 2005: Prize of the Polish Book Publishers Society (Nagroda wydawców)
• 2009: Finalist at the International Literature Prize - House of World Cultures with Piaskowa Góra
• 2013: Nike (literature prize) for Ciemno, prawie noc
• 2014: Spycher: Leuk Literature Prize
• 2016: Finalist at the International Literature Prize - House of World Cultures with Ciemno, prawie noc
• 2017: International Stefan Heym Prize
• 2017: Usedom Literature Prize
• 2018: International Hermann Hesse Prize , together with her translator Esther Kinsky

literature

• Joanna Bator , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 13/2014 from March 25, 2014, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Agnieszka Jezierska: Unloved Daughters - Broken Matrilinearity in Joanna Bator's dilogy "Sandberg und Wolkenfern", in: East-West Dialogue - Dialogue Wschodu i Zachodu: Polish Week - Tydzień polski, Saarbrücken 2015, pp. 11–24 ( PDF , also as print available)

Web links

• Literature by and about Joanna Bator in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Joanna Bator in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• Joanna Bator at the International Literature Festival Berlin 2015

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gazeta Wyborcza # 275, 24./25. November 2012, p. 21 (pol.).
2. ↑ Iris Radisch: Writer Joanna Bator: Hum in the beehive . In: The time . December 17, 2013, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed July 24, 2019]).
3. ^ Zeit Literatur , November 2013, p. 18.
4. ↑ Joanna Bator. Walter Benjamin Kolleg at the University of Bern , 2018, accessed on December 13, 2018 . 
5. ^ Zeit Literatur , November 2013, p. 18.
6. ↑ Review: The Republic of Women measures forty square meters. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , June 17, 2011, p. 34.
7. ↑ Napoleon's chamber pot. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , December 14, 2013, p. 37.
8. ^ Spycher: Leuk Literature Prize 2014 to Joanna Bator. www.buchmarkt.de, June 18, 2014, accessed on December 13, 2018 .