Tokarczuk's next novel, House of Day, House of Night, written in 1998 and shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2004, is different both in genre and tone, and in fact it is misleading to call it a 'novel'. A hybrid of diverse and more or less advanced plots, quasi-essay observations, private notes and the like, it is Tokarczuk's most personal and 'local' book, drawing inspiration from the area where she lives (a village in Sudety on the Polish and Czech border), such as in the stunning story of the medieval Saint Kummernis, a woman whom God saved from an unwanted marriage by giving her a male face.
Although 1997 saw the publication of Tokarczuk's little collection of three short stories, it was not until Gra na wielu bębenkach / Playing Many Drums that readers had a chance to admire her talent as a writer of shorter works. The book came out in 2001 and consisted of nineteen short stories divided into three cycles. The first one, numbering a few short stories, merits the term 'self-analytical', for Tokarczuk addresses the phenomenon of literary and non-literary creation. The second cycle is apocryphal; like Tokarczuk's fascinating story of Kummernis, which was based on a true story which she had uncovered in provincial Lower Silesia, so four of the short stories featured in this volume have similar roots. Tokarczuk - in her very own way - develops the 'follow ups', embellishes and breathes life into naked historical facts. The third, large group of stories offer realistic or, strictly speaking, psychological and incidental observations.
In 2000 Tokarczuk published Lalka i Perła (The Doll and the Pearl) an essay which proposed a new reading of Bolesław Prus's late nineteenth-century novel Lalka considered a masterpiece of Polish literature.
Tokarczuk's 2004 book Ostatnie historie (Latest stories), is another collection of short stories. Short forms are evidently becoming her favourite genre, so much so that has even proposed a story-telling festival.
After 2004 she published two books, Anna w grobowcach świata (Anna in the Catacombs) in 2006 and Bieguni (Flights) in 2007. The latter was nominated for the Angelus Central European Literary Award as well as has been honoured with the 2008 Nike Literary Award. In 2018, Jennifer Croft's translation of Flights won the Man Booker International Prize, the most important literary award for international fiction in Britain.
Markedly different from her other books, Anna w grobowcach świata was written within the framework of the international Myths series which has authors (such as, for instance, Margaret Atwood or, prospectively, Jacek Dukaj) retell myths. Tokarczuk chose to retell the myth of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of harvest and war who goes to her sister, the goddess of the underworld and death and unexpectedly comes back from there to the world of the living. Inanna is given a chance of returning by her fellow traveller, Nina Szubur, but the return is conditioned on her bringing someone else to the underworld. Her former lover is to be the sacrificial offering and his sister will partake in the sad obligation of staying in the underworld.The most striking aspect of the novel is the creation of a world in which the myth happens in a futuristic, cyberpunk environment. The characters use holographic maps, the kingdom of the underworld is shown as the undergrounds of a futuristic city, and the Father Gods whom Nina Szuber asks for help, resemble technocrats from some evil corporation. Literary critic Przemysław Czapliński observes that 'Tokarczuk has invented a genre, a language and a brand new way of speaking just for this book'.
Tokarczuk's Flights is not a travel book, but a book about the phenomenon of travel. After a mythographic novel with emotional ties to the described place Tokarczuk has surprised readers with a study of the psychology of travelling. At the same time the book's title is the name of an old Orthodox sect which believed that staying put made one vulnerable to the attacks of Evil, while continuous moving helped to redeem the soul. A similar motivation, though more secular and stemming from the longing for freedom, drives the heroes of each of the novel's themes. There is a woman who looks after a disabled child and who does not return home because of a revelation she experienced in church; an Australian researcher who revisits Poland years later, coming to see her terminally ill friend; a mother who takes her child and leaves her husband while on a family holiday in Croatia. There is also a story of Chopin's heart being transported to Poland, and one of a seventeenth-century anatomist, professor Ruysch, his daughter and his collection of specimens which gets ultimately sold to tsarist Russia.
With its many inter-connected themes, the structure of Flights brings to mind what Tokarczuk did in House of Day, House of Night. The concept worked well then - and it does so now, too.
Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych (Drive Your Plough Through the Bones of the Dead) was released in 2009. In the novel she toys with the genre of suspense while addressing the issue of a 'human' way of treating animals. Anne-Dore Krohn of the German kulturradio remarques 'it is a fantastic book. It is a deeply pessimistic and melancholic story about environment protection, set in the scenery of Silesian mountains, with an intertwined motif of suspense'. The book was brought to the big screen by Agnieszka Holland in 2017. The film titled Pokot (Spoor) was premiered at the Berlin film festival and won Berlin’s prestigious Silver Bear.
