Reading the Environment

Olga Tokarczuk’s Fiction

Dominika Oramus

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040416198
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Reading the Environment: Olga Tokarczuk's Fiction aims at analysing the dynamics of reading fiction in the context of accelerating climate change. This volume proposes an environment-oriented model of reading and applies it to a well-defined corpus—all existing English translations of Olga Tokarczuk's fiction. These are: Primeval and Other Times, House of Day, House of Night, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Flights, The Books of Jacob and The Empusium, removed from the immediate cultural context of a single author, these novels give a representative sample of contemporary literature read by Anglophone people of diverse national backgrounds who live in different localities, but share one endangered planet, whether they realise it or not. The book charts five ways in which our reading protocols have shifted: the way of interconnectedness, the way of naturecultures, the way of sympoiesis, the way of Earth Island, and the way of the beginning of the Anthropocene. This book is written for an academic audience (postgraduates, researchers and academics) specialising in Environmental Humanities, Ecocriticism, World Literature, Postmodern Literature and Climate Fiction.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Ways of Reading (in) the Environment
• 1 “The World’s slimy umbilical cords.”: The Way of Interconnectedness in Primeval and Other Times
• 2 “The Smell of Mushrooms and Wet Hey.”: The Way of Naturecultures in House of Day, House of Night
• 3 “How great and full of life the world is”: The Way of Sympoiesis in Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
• 4 “But this is the island of Bikini”: The Way of Earth Island in Flights
• 5 “Human stupidity is responsible for introducing sadness into the world”: The Way of the Beginning of Anthropocene in The Books of Jacob
• Conclusion
• Index