Joanna Bator was born in Walbrzych, Poland. In Warsaw she studied cultural studies and philosophy, graduating with a doctoral thesis about feminism, postmodernity, and psychoanalysis. She was lecturer of philosophy at various academic institutions (Warsaw, New York, London, Tokyo) and has published articles and essays in numerous journals, such as in Tygodnik Powszechny, National Geographic, and Voyage. She turned experiences made during a multi-year stay in Japan into the novel Japoński wachlarz (English: The Japanese Fan). Since 2011, she has been completely focusing on her novelistic work. Her literary oeuvre is peopled by unusual female characters. Already her debut novel from 2002 was tellingly titled Kobieta (English: A Woman). She had her breakthrough with the publication of the autofictional novel Sandy Mountain, which she wrote while in Japan, and which won her much critical acclaim. Her next novel, Cloudalia, further follows this multi-generational narrative taking place in a post-communist prefab housing estate and takes the story out of the Polish province and into faraway worlds and times. In 2013, she received the most important literary prize in Poland, the Nike Award for Ciemno prawie noc (English: Dark, Almost Night), for which she in 2014 also was the recipient of the Spycher Literary Prize in Leuk (Switzerland). Joanna Bator lives in Warsaw.
Joanna Bator ist eine Zauberin, sie bringt schweres Gelände zum Fliegen.
- Bernd Kempker, WDR3
