Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska (; 2 July 1923 – 1 February 2012) was a Polish poet, essayist, translator, and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Prowent (now part of Kórnik), she resided in Kraków until the end of her life. In Poland, Szymborska's books have reached sales rivaling prominent prose authors', though she wrote in a poem, "Some Like Poetry" ("Niektórzy lubią poezję"), that "perhaps" two in a thousand people like poetry. Szymborska was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality". She became better known internationally as a result. Her work has been translated into English and many European languages, as well as into Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Persian and Chinese. Life Wisława Szymborska was born on 2 July 1923 in Prowent, Poland (now part of Kórnik, Poland), the second daughter of Wincenty Szymborski and Anna (née Rottermund) Szymborska. Her father was, at that time, the steward of Count Władysław Zamoyski, a Polish patriot and charitable patron. After Zamoyski's death in 1924, her family moved to Toruń, and in 1931 to Kraków, where she lived and worked until her death in early 2012. When World War II broke out in 1939, she continued her education in underground classes. From 1943, she worked as a railroad employee and managed to avoid being deported to Germany as a forced labourer. During this time, her career as an artist began, with illustrations for an English-language textbook. She also began writing stories and occasional poems. In 1945, she began studying Polish literature before switching to sociology at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. There, she became involved in the local writing scene, and met and was influenced by Czesław Miłosz. In March 1945, she published her first poem, "Szukam słowa" ("Looking for words"), in the daily newspaper Dziennik Polski. Her poems continued to be published in various newspapers and periodicals for a number of years. In 1948, she quit her studies without a degree, due to poor financial circumstances; the same year, she married poet Adam Włodek, whom she divorced in 1954. They remained close until Włodek's death in 1986. Their union was childless. Around the time of her marriage, she was working as a secretary for an educational biweekly magazine as well as an illustrator. Her first book was to be