Olga Tokarczuk is the new Arne Næss Chair

We are proud to announce the 2022 Arne Næss Professor – the Nobel Prize winner in literature (2018) – Olga Tokarczuk.

photo of olga tokarczuk

Photo: Karpat&Zarewizc (ZAIKS)

Olga Tokarczuk is one of the most original nature thinkers and writers of our time. She is the author of such masterpieces as Primeval and Other Times, Flights and the eco-thriller Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Her latest magnum opus, The Books of Job, has been declared by The New York Times as “A fantastic journey across seven borders, five languages and three major religions, not counting the minor sects.”   

photo of nina witoszek
Nina Witoszek is director of the Arne Næss Programme at SUM.

– From a Norwegian perspective, it is intriguing to see the affinities between Olga Tokarczuk’s fiction and Arne Næss’s ideas. Tokarczuk shows how human greed, failure to respect nature, and selfishness, have reduced our world – and ourselves - to a commodity. Her dream comes close to Næss’s vision of a republic of ‘caring creatives’ on planet Earth, says says Nina Witoszek, director of the Arne Næss Programme at SUM, UiO. 

The Arne Næss Symposium

The Arne Næss Symposium featuring Olga Tokarczuk will take place on 25 August 2022, at Gamle Festsal, 18.00-20.00. More information, including how to register, can be found here.

For more information contact the head of Arne Næss programme on Global Justice and the Environment, Nina Witoszek: nina.witoszek@sum.uio.no


Image may contain: Black, Head, Monochrome photography, Black-and-white, Human.The Arne Næss Programme

We draw on, and critically develop, the intellectual legacy after Norway’s greatest ecophilosopher, researcher and environmental activist.

Read more about SUMs Arne Næss Programme.

By Anna Eriksen Rio
Published Feb. 22, 2022 3:28 PM - Last modified June 10, 2022 10:51 AM