Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: A Novel

Written by Olga Tokarczuk

Narrated by Beata Pozniak

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?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Translator: Antonia Lloyd-Jones
• Release date: Aug 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781984888792

Olga Tokarczuk

Olga Tokarczuk (Sulechów, Polonia, 1962) es autora de ocho novelas y tres colecciones de relatos. Su obra, traducida a una treintena de idiomas, ha merecido los más prestigiosos premios y reconocimientos internacionales. Sobre los huesos de los muertos fue llevada a la gran pantalla en 2017 por la realizadora Agnieszka Holland. Tokarczuk ganó el Man Booker Internacional Award en 2018 y fue finalista del National Book Award en la categoría de libros traducidos. En 2019 ha recibido el Premio Nobel de Literatura.

Reviews for Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

[acia-11 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

From the start I was taken by the main protagonist who is a delight in her idiosyncrasies, strangeness, and vulnerability. She inhabits a landscape with other strange (yet recognizable) humans and in her slightly mad perspective bites into the landscape, animal protection, William Blake, society's structures and hypocrisies, astrogy, murder, human folly, friendship, and more.

[benjaminthelibrarian · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.5 stars.

Finished this one a while ago but forgot to update it here. I liked the story and the characters, although there were times where I didn't know where the story was going, if anywhere. Overall I enjoyed it.

[booklove2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another trippy translated book. I'm realizing it is rare that a book translated into English are usually the weirder books I read. The main character here qualifies as odd. I'm not sure how much of this book is 1:1 relatable to the poet William Blake. If so, I don't know much about him, so not sure how that applies here. Not a great note here for a Nobel Prize winner, I will admit!

[kalliegrace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So strange and unique, I don't think I've read anything quite like this before. I have to say, killing people for killing animals makes even less sense than killing women for having abortions. If you say you value life, you can't really pick and choose. Such strange characters and funny little insights throughout though.

[technodiabla · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this in audiobook format.

This novel is about an old woman living in rural Poland. She lives a fairly solitary life doing astrology, translating William Blake, and admiring the forest animals. Meanwhile, a string of unusual murders wraps up her and her entire village in their mysteries. I enjoyed the main character-- her stubborn individuality and lack of concern for the opinions of others-- though her astrology obsession became tiresome for me at times. Despite there being several gruesome murders, this book is dryly humorous and has a certain warmth as a group of unlikely friends timidly forms. I loved the ending, even though you could see it coming from early in the book.

[marshakt · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful, quirky book

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I simply don't know what to say about this oddity. Let me quote the NY Times Book Review: "A marvelously weird and fable-like mystery...a philosophical fairy tale about life and death..." That's good, except maybe for the "marvelous" part. Because there is SO much heavy-handed condemnation of humans who hunt or just eat animals, SO much astrology-gibberish that the intriguing mystery kind of gets short-changed. I admit I didn't see the reveal coming, and I think that may have been in part due to those distracting and detracting elements. Translated from the Polish.

[eglinton_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tale of odd happenings and eccentric folk, but the voice of the narrative carries it. Tokarczuk writes in an intriguing, imaginative style that keeps the reader on board. And thus even the harping-on about astrology - normally a complete turn-off - is readable. Hard to summarise what it’s about, or perhaps merely unnecessary, but there are plentiful challenging insights: Tokarczuk, apparently (according to my Polish work colleague), has ended up more or less exiled from Poland due to this nonconformity of thinking (and to the opposite tendency in mainstream Polish culture).

[fionaanne · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Charmingly bizarre. This is the sort of book that appeals to only a certain type of reader and anyone else will hate it.

[lisapeet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this for my book club and loved it—being now firmly in the older, cranky, animal-company-seeking lady demographic that, I'm discovering, has some wonderful representation in fiction. I've already bought a copy of this as a Christmas gift for a fellow cranky old animal loving friend, and recommended it to another (who will have much more love for the astrology component, which is not my thing in the least but I appreciated as an example of any method that we get attached to to help make sense of the world).

[annbury_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a strange and wonderful book, a combination murder mystery, fairy tale, political polemic, and character study. That's a lot to cram into one column, and it took me quite a while to get deeply involved. The central character is an old Polish woman who cares at least as deeply for animals as for people, and who is a committed astrologer, convinced that the stars determine our lives and characters. She has friends (an odd group) but she also has enemies. As the novel progresses, it turns out to be operating on several levels, asking profound questions as well as the ones on the surface. When I first started listening, I didn't know if I would finish. By the time I had finished, I had ordered a physical book: I want to reread it, and there are many passages I want to highlight.

[gypsy_boy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyable light read but I agree with the others here who have commented that this is not indicative of Nobel-Prize-winning ability. The random capitalization (borrowed from William Blake) adds nothing, and even the focus/preoccupation with astrology is of less than compelling significance. All in all, pleasant but not much more. Time to figure out which book is next.

[japaul22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

[Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead] is a novel that is hard to describe. On the surface, it's a murder mystery set in a small town in Poland on the border with the Czech Republic. It is winter and our aging narrator, Janina, is caring for her neighbors' properties, because only a few stay in this remote village over winter. People start dying in suspicious ways. Janina, who is an expert in astrology, suspects the Animals in their region, who are sick of being hunted and eaten by the local men.

Though you would expect that this dramatic-sounding story would be the obvious focal point of the book, it is not. Instead, it's a character study of the unreliable narrator, her neighbors and friends, and life in the village.

It's a unique novel and I see both why it's so respected and popular, and why it might not get glowing reviews across the board. It's a bit tough to know what you're supposed to be experiencing as a reader. But, I ended up really liking it.

[jklugman_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I honestly feel better knowing that someone like Olga Tokarczuk is out there writing novels like this. Her protagonist is kind of crazy--as evidenced by her obsession with astrology--but her observations puncture the smug, self-satisfying anthropocentric views that dominate Polish society (among others). A mystery serves as a loose unifying structure, as Duszejko (who prefers to go by her last name only) ponders a conspiracy of animals responsible for the deaths of hunters in her rural vilage, but the novel is really about her relationships with other people in the town and her literary, social and existential reflections.

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"The familiar cold, wet air that reminds us every winter that the world was not created for Mankind, and for at least half the year, it shows us how very hostile it is to us."

This book is a combination of a weird and fable-like fairy tale with a murder mystery. It is also very message-driven, as the author explores the ways in which some living creatures are privileged above others. Finally, it is an examination of how we stigmatize those who are "different."

Sixty-something Janina (she hates her name) lives in the mountains as the winter caretaker of vacation cottages. She has a reputation as a crank and obsessive animal-lover. She is interested in horoscopes, translating the poetry of William Blake, and nature. She gives everyone a name based on the characteristics she sees in them, so we have her neighbors Oddball and Big Foot, Dizzy, with whom she is collaborating in the Blake translation, Good News, a friend, and so on. When the novel opens, Oddball has discovered the body of Big Foot. Although Big Foot apparently choked on a bone, Janina begins to think he may have been murdered. There follow in quick succession a number of other deaths which clearly were homicides. One thing that connects the victims is that they were all hunters, so Janina tries to convince the police that they were all murdered by animals who are taking their revenge for the mistreatment of animals by hunters.

From this description, I think you can see that this book is original, inventive, and unusual. I enjoyed it very much. There were many sentences and phrases I highlighted, and Tokarczuk has created a unique and memorable character in Janina. I won't soon forget this book, and will definitely be reading more by this author.

4 stars

First line: "I am already at an age and additionally in a state where I must always wash my feet thoroughly before bed in the event of having to be removed by an ambulance in the night."

[jjordan3122 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

8/10 - Enjoyable read with plenty to think about.

Practically raced through Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. The reclusive Janina Duszejko (though don't you dare call her Janina), an elderly astrologist and animal rights activist, leads the reader through her life in a sparse village in rural Poland as she comments on everything and everything though, all the while, one gets the sense she's holding some things back.

She is particularly interested in a string of murders (all of them hunters from her village) and holds a strong suspicion she knows who -or what- is behind them. Though Duszejko waxes on about astrology in moments (fascinating, I'm sure, for those better versed than me), she remains an interesting and complicated character, leaving a strong impression on the reader. The twist at the end, while sparsely hinted to, feels particularly satisfying once the pieces come together.

[steve02476 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked this novel and the odd but endearing lady at the center of it. Since I only read the translation it’s hard to know, but I felt like the translation must have been very good, and a bit of a challenge.

[josephking6602 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I couldn’t get into the flow of this one…. Good writing, but i just didn’tfollow it

[castlelass · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is an atypical mystery where the focus is not so much on a string of disappearances and deaths as on the state of mind of the first-person narrator, Mrs. Duszejko (Mrs. D), a sixty-something woman who lives in a rural Polish village and attempts to “assist” the investigators. It starts with a neighbor’s death from choking but promptly moves into a close examination of Mrs. D’s inner world. She is a former engineer, currently working as a teacher of English and assisting a former student in translating William Blake’s poetry into Polish. There are numerous references to Blake throughout the novel, and his verse opens each chapter.

Mrs. D’s eccentricities include:

• • Preference for animals over humans
  
• • Belief that certain laws are immoral
  
• • Passion for astrology, how planets and star-signs rule a person’s fate
  
• • Strong aversion to hunting and what she sees as religious hypocrisy
  
• • Viewing the neighboring Czech Republic as a utopia of sorts
  

Readers will be able to tell that Mrs. D has issues, and these play a role in the plot. For the most part, her Ailments (as she calls them) are not spelled out but left up to the reader to decipher. This book poses philosophical questions that provide food-for-thought about the relationship between humans and animals. It explores the nature of the limits we place upon each other, and especially upon aging women.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I found it engrossing and was curious to see where it was headed. I tend to enjoy eccentric characters, and Mrs. D is quite a colorful individual. I liked her group of unusual friends, a group of fellow eccentrics, and could picture them sitting around a kitchen table, sipping cups of black tea, and discussing the goings on of the community. I enjoyed the descriptions of the Polish countryside in winter and what it is like to live in such harsh conditions. I learned several interesting facts about nature. I particularly liked the author’s expressive writing style (with credit to the translator, as I read the English translation from the original Polish). For example:
“We left the house and were instantly engulfed by the familiar cold, wet air that reminds us every winter that the world was not created for Mankind, and for at least half the year it shows us how very hostile it is to us. The frost brutally assailed our cheeks, and clouds of white steam came streaming from our mouths. The porch light went out automatically and we walked across the crunching snow in total darkness, except for Oddball’s headlamp, which pierced the pitch dark in one shifting spot, just in front of him, as I tripped along in the Murk behind him.”
On the other hand, if the author was going for social commentary, I do not think she succeeds, as some of her key points are contradicted through the characters’ actions. The logical result of these actions would be the opposite of what I believe is the intended message. It is hard to spell this out without spoilers. The subtle humor was a bit too dark for my personal taste and it contains rather gory and disturbing descriptions of deaths of people and animals. I am not sorry to have read it but felt a bit of a letdown at the end. If anyone is looking for a “literary mystery,” this book would be a good fit.

[janerawoof · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fascinating different sort of murder mystery--story told by an eccentric old woman more devoted to animals than to people, an amateur astrologist, and with a neighbor, translator of William Blake from English to Polish. After the murders, the perpetrator's own words give us the who/how/why dunnit.
Very enjoyable and readable. I felt this translation to be very well done.

[alisony-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but found it an enjoyable read. I liked Tokarczuk's style of writing from the get go, the feisty older lady protagonist and the physicality of the setting described.

There's something about this book that makes it an odd kind of read. I think it's perhaps that the narrative is following the somewhat barmy, unreliable thoughts of the woman. It layers literary fiction with a noir thriller element and dark comedy. Sometimes it seems obvious where the plot is heading. At other times it sends you in different directions.

Overall I enjoyed it, but I'm not quite ready to sign up to the fan club just yet. The writing style really drew me in, but I felt a little flat by the end with where the plot went.

4 stars - definitely worth a read, but I don't feel it's going to stick with me for long.

[sriddell_8 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is a stream of consciousness from a older woman Janina, living in a remote area of Poland, on the Czech border.

She's a vegetarian, astrologer, defender of animals, English teacher, friend to at least some of her neighbors. She's a caretaker to the vacation homes of the wealthy who return to Warsaw in the winter.

Janina's very disturbed by the hunting and poaching in the area. When some of the hunters start to die in mysterious circumstances, she makes a good case that these hunters have themselves been killed by deer or foxes or insects.

Janina is also helping to translate work from William Blake into Polish, and the title is a paraphrase of this proverb from William Blake: "In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and drive, over the bones of the dead. The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom." From the Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

I would describe this a part philosophy, part indictment of rigid societal norms. A significant contrast is set between Janina and her neighbors: One set of behaviors is considered "good" or "normal", while Janina's more compassionate approach is considered "crazy" and "odd".

Definitely an interesting read!

[thornton37814 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Abandoned. I read about half of it, but I just couldn't get into it, and I did not enjoy the astrological theme in part of it. Life's too short to keep reading something you don't enjoy.

[pamelad_570511 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Only people who don't know her call the elderly Mrs Janina Dusjejko by her first name. She's never thought it belonged to her, and calls herself Duszejko. Other people, too, have names that don't fit, so she gives them names that do: Dizzy, Oddball, Good News, Bigfoot. She lives on an isolated plateau, so close to the Czech republic the phone signal is as likely to come from there as from Poland. In winter, she acts as caretaker for the holiday houses on the plateau, with Oddball and Bigfoot her closest neighbours.

When the story starts, Dusjejko, the narrator, has little to do with her neighbours, but that changes when Oddball calls her out in the middle of the night. Bigfoot is dead, choked to death on a bone from a deer he has killed and eaten. His death is followed by others, all of them hunters, so Dusjejko formulates the theory that the animals are taking revenge.

Dusjejko has an appealing voice: wry, funny and observant. She once built bridges in the Middle East, but her Ailments have limited her activity. Now she teaches English to primary school children one day a week, helps her friend Dizzy translate Blake into Polish, and casts horoscopes. Like Blake she has a mystical view of the natural world and animals are as important to her as people are.

This is a philosophical, comic crime investigation, with a pinch of politics and sociology. I loved it.

[colligan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

When I started this book I really wanted to like it. I had read numerous positive reviews. Moreover, it won a Nobel Prize! Then I began to read it and started to feel (with some guilt) that I didn't really like it. As I read on I started to wonder how I could give the book an honest review and/or rating. For god's sake, it won a Nobel Prize! I finished the book still not liking it. It just didn't work for me. Interesting, yes, at times. Creative, yes. Memorable, insightful, and well written, at times maybe. Based on public opinion, I think it's fair to conclude, it's probably me. Let's just say that it's a good thing that I don't sit on the Nobel Literature Committee. This last thought would probably be almost universally endorsed.

[overgaard-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

fabulously constructed, erudite, intriguing, and above all; satisfying as a work of fiction and of art

[nbmars · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The narrator of this quirky book is Janina Duszejko, an aging woman who lives in a rural Polish village near the Czech border. We learn from her that she is an avid astrologer with a penchant for translating William Blake’s poetry into Polish. The rather bizarre title of the book is a quote from Blake’s equally bizarre Proverbs of Hell.

As the book begins, her neighbor Big Foot, a frequent hunter, is found dead in his home by Janina's friend Oddball. From Janina and Oddball's inspection of the scene, it seems Big Foot choked on a bone while eating. Janina also finds a shocking photograph in Big Foot's house, the nature of which is not revealed until the penultimate chapter. Janina disliked Big Foot because she disagreed with hunting animals. She began to believe that animals could have killed Big Foot out of vengeance. She wrote to the local police, who ignored her theory. The police commandant – called the Commandant by Janina – is also a hunter and is later found dead beside his car by Janina’s friend Dizzy. The Commandant's death emboldens Janina's beliefs, but her friends Dizzy and Oddball are skeptical of them. Janina is questioned by police as a witness to the crime scene. One officer accuses Janina of seemingly valuing the life of animals more than that of humans. Janina tells them that she values both equally.

But she also believes that “Animals show the truth about a country. If people behave brutally towards animals, no form of democracy is ever going help them, in fact nothing will at all.”

Meanwhile, the mishaps continue. The village's wealthy fur farmer and brothel owner, Innerd, goes missing. An entomologist named Borys–spelled "Boros" by Janina – comes to the village. He is researching endangered beetles and hopes to convince the Polish government to protect them from extinction. Janina likes Boros and allows him to move in with her. The two eventually become romantically involved. Innerd is later found dead in the forest, with an animal snare around his leg. Weeks later, “the President,” leader of a local social club and also a hunter, is found dead, covered in beetles.

A new Catholic chapel is opened in the village headed by Father Rustle, a local Catholic priest and avid hunter. In one of his sermons, Father Rustle praises hunters, calling them "ambassadors and partners of the Lord God in the work of creation." Janina interrupts the sermon, yelling at Rustle and the rest of the villagers. She asks, "Have you fallen asleep? How can you listen to such nonsense without batting an eyelid? Have you lost your minds? Or your hearts? Have you still got hearts?" Days later, the presbytery burns down and Father Rustle is found dead.

In the end, all is revealed and a kind of justice is served.

(JAB)

[alexbolding · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well plotted novel about an amateur astrologist cum animal lover, who grieves over the loss of her ‘two girls’, while it seems the animals around her are on a killing spree among elderly men in her neighbourhood. She is a retired engineer, who teaches some English at a local primary school, and translates poems of Blake jointly with an ex student of her (Dizzy) who is equally marginalised from mainstream society despite his (IT) job at the local Police. Otherwise she looks after a number of summer cottages on a forested plateau on the border with the Czech republic.

During winter, it is only she and two solitary men, Big Foot and Oddball, who stay on, in their respective cottages. Then Big Foot is found dead in his kitchen, surrounded by remains of one deer, with a deer bone choking his throat – was he killed by the deer? Or did he simply die while gorging on a deer he shot? It is the start of a series of tragic events that leads to the discovery of violent deaths of the Police Commandant, rich fox farmer Innards, local retired MP and chairman of the local hunting lodge, and finally the local priest whose church is consumed by fire. Gradually the woman’s role in this spree of murders changes from alternative investigator and source of information, to weird madwoman with strange ideas about animals taking revenge on hunters, to main suspect, to… In the process of the on-going investigations, she establishes closer ties with Oddball, Dizzy, and a woman called Good News, who runs a local clothes store. She also hosts a weird entomologist who investigates a rare type of beetle, common on the plateau. In the end it becomes clear who the two Little Girls are, what their role in the story is, and what might have caused the death of all these old men.

I can see why everybody likes Olga T, and how she became eligible for the Nobel Prize for Literature, though I do not think she is of the same stature as some writers, who did not get the Prize (like Phillip Roth, but hey, she is still an awesome writer, certainly compared to Bob Dylan!). Some aspects of her style feel very familiar because I share her convictions and style conventions (like the use of nick names; the observation that someone who uses the combination ‘In truth’ virtually every other sentence, is likely to be a liar, etc.).

[bell7_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Janina - she does hate her name, it doesn't suit her - lives on the plateau year-round and checks in on the houses of those who come up only in the summer. It's winter, and one of her two neighbors dies, apparently choking on the bone of a deer he was eating. Janina feels this deeply, particularly because she hates cruelty to animals, and when other mysterious deaths occur, she's convinced that the animals themselves are taking revenge, if only she can get someone to listen.

How to summarize such a book? It's been called a mystery, and there is a mystery, but it's more of a character study. Janina narrates, and we come to know her in all her eccentricities: loving animals more than humans, convinced that astrology has the answers to everything, and increasingly frustrated that her voice is not heard. As a reader, I found her sympathetic, even in all her oddities, and the denouement was less of a surprise than an inevitability.

[lady_lazarus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

For me this was a nice read, nothing extraordinary. Language was beautiful and the theme of hypocrisy is something I feel important in the society. The plot, however, didn't get my sympathies... I felt for the main protagonist, loosing her dogs, which were her family, and no one being held responsible for it by the society. While she was not religious, she was spiritual and believed in astrology and the influence of nature on life. Although I have nothing against astrology, I found that this aspect was somewhat poorly represented in the book. It felt somehow forced and not even necessary. Well, perhaps one could argue that one of the themes was comparison of conventional (catholic) religion to the other, often overlooked forms, of spirituality, but still I think this spirituality would have worked better with more subtle tones and without astrology. I was also craving more of magical realism -vibes to the story and would have been more delighted if it wouldn't have turned out as a rather conventional revenge/murder story.