'Flurry' of international rights deals for Nobel-winning Olga Tokarczuk, says RCW

Olga Tokarczuk's literary agency has revealed there has been a "flurry of offers" for around 50 territories, following her Nobel Prize win last month.

Tokarczuk was recently named the winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature last month, a year after scooping the Man Booker International for Flights (Fizcarraldo). Following her Nobel win, she was also shortlisted for the 2019 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for the second year running.

Her literary agency Rogers, Coleridge and White (RCW) has now revealed that the recent attention - in particular the Nobel win - has seen renewed interest in Tokarczuk's work in new languages, after previously being out of print in many languages. 

RCW agent Laurence Laluyaux told The Bookseller said over the last month the deals have grown from 40 to almost 50 with deals in unexpected countries.

“Olga has been published into many languages over the last 20 years, but often the books have gone out of print and off the market," Laluyaux said.  "Her winning the Man Booker International in 2018 gave us the brilliant opportunity to find and establish her with new publishers, so by the time she won the Nobel Prize we had 40 publishers on board who had all committed to several books. Since then we’ve had a flurry of offers for more backlist titles and some new languages too such as Malayalam and Armenian... It is very unusual to have offers [in these territories], we also now have offers for other very small markets like Basque language in Spain, and offers coming in from Georgia, Belarus, Kazaksthan, Ukraine, all of which are small markets."

She added that "the books are selling really well and reprinting in a lot of countries". 

Laluyaux revealed she was particularly delighted with how indy publishers and translators have celebrated Tokarczuk's success. "It has been wonderful to see some of the very loyal long-term publishers and translators celebrate alongside the new publishers, and I’d like to highlight in particular the inspired work done by small independent publishing houses. Fitzcarraldo played a crucial role which has had a great impact internationally. In Germany, six books had been published but everything was out of print when we started representing Olga. Kampa Verlag had only just launched [in autumn 2018] and the publisher immediately committed to seven titles so a huge amount of her work was available when she won the Nobel. It is passionate publishing at its best”.

In the UK, Fitzcarraldo Editions has published two novels by Tokarczuk in English. Flights, translated by Jennifer Croft, was published in 2017, and won the Man Booker International Prize in 2018. Her second novel with Fitzcarraldo, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2018), translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, was also shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019. Fitzcarraldo will publish The Books of Jacob, in 2021. 

Laluyaux believes that Tokarczuk holds wide appeal beyond literary circles. "She is a rare thing, a very literary author with a serious body of work whose books are not perceived as elitist and who readers know to be diverse, tolerant and inspiring." 

The author's home country has done much to celebrate the author's success, Laluyaux said. "The city of Krakow has just planted 25,000 trees to replicate the forest that appears in some of her books and Olga has also just announced that she is setting up a foundation in her city, Wroclaw, which will offer scholarships for writers and translators and also be a platform for international debate," she said. "The weekend after she won, the mayor of Wroclaw also gave free transport to anyone carrying one of her books."

Laluyaux added that RCW is "very proud to have two RCW winners" of a Nobel Prize for Literature in a row, after Kazuo Ishirugo won the award in 2017.