During a ceremony on Tuesday, she was among eight distinguished figures from the fields of arts, literature, science and technology to receive the prestigious title.
In an interview published on the university’s website, Tokarczuk said: "I am very pleased. I have great respect for academic work and for the university environment in general. Such a distinction proves that my books are taken seriously, that my artistic voice helps to understand the reality that surrounds us."
Tokarczuk’s works have been translated into more than 50 languages.
Her first book translated into French, Primeval and Other Times (1998), was followed by Final Stories (2004), Flights (2007) and, most recently, The Empusium (2022).
The university describes The Empusium as "both a delightful dialogue with The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, a critical re-examination of texts on women from antiquity to the 20th century."
The Sorbonne University praised Tokarczuk’s originality, saying that it "resides in her ability to merge genres, to blur the boundaries between reality and fiction, and to create fragmented narratives that reflect the complexity of the contemporary world and invite reflection on its most crucial issues, with a style which is both poetic and philosophical."
In 2019, Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy cited her "narrative imagination that, with an encyclopedic passion, represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life."
Her distinctions also include an honorary doctorate from the University of Wrocław in southwestern Poland.
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Click on the audio player above for a report by Agnieszka Bielawska.