Warsaw, Oct. 11 -- The Swedish Academy's decision to bestow the 2018 Nobel Prize in literature on Polish author Olga Tokarczuk has given a rare morale boost to liberal Poles only three days before a national election that is likely to be won by the country's right-wing populist party.

Tokarczuk, 57, is a literary celebrity in Poland, whose reputation has risen fast in the English-speaking world, particularly after she won the Man Booker International prize in 2018 for her novel "Flights." She won the Nobel for what the prize committee said was "a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life."

But she is not loved by all in her native land.

She has been criticized by Polish...