Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
By Olga Tokarczuk & Antonia Lloyd-Jones
- Release Date: 2019-08-13
- Genre: Mysteries & Thrillers
Description
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
"A brilliant literary murder mystery." —Chicago Tribune
"Extraordinary. Tokarczuk's novel is funny, vivid, dangerous, and disturbing, and it raises some fierce questions about human behavior. My sincere admiration for her brilliant work." —Annie Proulx
In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .
A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?
Reviews
Oh, the stuff you’ll learn
5By RichLew52Brilliant, funny, surprising. And easier than a Polish vacation.Decent
3By doug funnieFairly obvious if you’re paying attention early on...the author makes a mistake by offering a little too much with one character’s tiny correction. Otherwise, the book is the musings of a stereotypical “crazy old cat lady”; not much insight to be gleaned nor good humor to be found. I enjoyed it mostly for its portrayal of a tucked-away small town and its surrounding outposts on the Czech/Polish border.The translation seems a little uneven sometimes; though I don’t read the native language it was written in, certain lines just come across as oddly translated.
