This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

Public transport in Wrocław will be free this weekend for anyone carrying a book written by Poland’s newly crowned Nobel literature laureate Olga Tokarczuk, city officials have announced.

“As soon as we heard the news on Thursday that Olga Tokarczuk won the Nobel, we wanted to share our joy with all the residents of our city, which recently made the writer an honorary citizen,” said a city hall spokesman, Przemysław Gałecki.

“Through Sunday, every passenger carrying a book or ebook by Olga Tokarczuk can ride public transit free in our city.”.

Tokarczuk, 57, splits her time between Wrocław, a city of 650,000 people, and the western village of Krajanów on the border with the Czech Republic.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cathedral of St John in Wrocław. Photograph: Kavalenkava Volha/Alamy

The activist and writer, who does not shy away from criticising Poland’s governing conservatives, said in June that Wrocław was “one of the most beautiful and important cities of Europe”.

She won the 2018 Nobel literature prize, which had been delayed by one year over a sexual harassment scandal, “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life”, the Swedish Academy said.