Polish author Olga Tokarczuk smiles after winning the Man Booker International prize 2018, Tuesday, May 22, 2018, for her book Flights, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. (Matt Crossick//PA via AP)
Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk has won the prestigious Man Booker International Prize for fiction with "Flights," a novel that charts multiple journeys in time, space and human anatomy.
The book combines tales of modern-day travel with the story of a 17th-century anatomist who dissected his own amputated leg and the journey of composer Frederic Chopin's heart from Paris to Warsaw after his death.
The judging panel led by writer Lisa Appignanesi on Tuesday called it a witty, playful novel in which "the contemporary condition of perpetual movement" meets the certainty of death.
The prize is a counterpart to the Man Booker Prize and is open to books in any language that have been translated into English.
The 50,000-pound ($67,000) award is split between the writer and her translator, Jennifer Croft.
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