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Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead

Olga Tokarczuk,

Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Translator)

3.96 · Rating details · 67,768 ratings · 8,745 reviews

One of Poland's most imaginative and lyrical writers, Olga Tokarczuk presents us with a detective story with a twist in DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD. After her two dogs go missing and members of the local hunting club are found murdered, teacher and animal rights activist Janina Duszejko becomes involved in the ensuing investigation. Part magic realism, part ...more

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Paperback, 268 pages

Published September 26th 2018 by Fitzcarraldo Editions (first published November 25th 2009)

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Apr 11, 2020 Robin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: booker-prize-nominated, translation, 2020, literary-fiction, poland, noir

Oh, YES.

Literary, quirky, snarky, noir. Asks the same questions that Dostoevsky asks in Crime and Punishment - who has the right to live? who has the right to kill? and what's the difference between a poacher and a hunter, anyway? (that last question is Tokarczuk's, not Dostoevsky's....)

These questions are asked in a most unique way. A middle aged woman in rural Poland, a woman who is best described as eccentric (obsessed with astrology, plagued by "ailments" both physical and psychological), fi ...more

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Jan 14, 2020 Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: polish-21st-c, novels, nobel-lit, fiction, ecological-fiction

Never underestimate the strength and fortitude of middle-age ladies. What makes this novel stand out is precisely its unusual protagonist: single, eccentric, living in the woods with her astrology. A woman we would pass on the street and ignore, like many do in the telling of the tale, much to their own disadvantage...

Janine hates her name and loves giving her own names to folks in her life:
The naming of Big Foot occured in a similar way. It was quite straightforward - it suggested itself to me Never underestimate the strength and fortitude of middle-age ladies. What makes this novel stand out is precisely its unusual protagonist: single, eccentric, living in the woods with her astrology. A woman we would pass on the street and ignore, like many do in the telling of the tale, much to their own disadvantage...

Janine hates her name and loves giving her own names to folks in her life:
The naming of Big Foot occured in a similar way. It was quite straightforward - it suggested itself to me when I saw his footprints in the snow...Unfortunately, I couldn't choose a suitable name for myself. I regard that the one that's written on my identity card as scandalously wrong for me and unfair - Janina. I think my real name is Emily, or Joanna. Sometimes I think it's something like Irmtrude too. Or Bellona. Or Medea." (p. 19). The mention of Medea is particularly significant in what follows.

She is quite alone and saddened when she tries to save an abused animal which returns to its abusive home when she opens her door. That was the last I'd seen of her. I'd called her, annoye at letting myself be led up the garden path so easily, and helpless in the path of the sinister workings of bondage. I'd started to put on my boots, but that terrible gray morning alarmed me. Sometimes I feel as if we're living inside a tomb, a large spacious one for lots of people. I looked at the world wreathed in gray Murk, cold and nasty. The prison is not outside, but inside each of us. Perhaps we simply don't know how to live without it. (p. 32) I found this a nice update to Nietsche's abyss.

Her concept of spirituality is Kantian to a degree:And it will unfold for us, for it is our mother, this Light, and we came from it. We even carry a particle of it within us, each of us, even Big Foot. So in fact death should please us." (p. 39)

Many times in the book, Janine observes nature very carefully and sees the interdependency of relationships (see page 98 for some aspects of the life of certain birds). This reminded me a bit of The Overstory in that nature is very important to the action in the book.

The book is populated with characters such as Good News who has a shop that Janine adores and the existential Dentist who performs surgery illegally out in a yard. (p. 136) and her best friend Dizzy who translates William Blake poetry with Janine.

What I liked was her keen sense of observation such as the overuse of expressions by people: These words or phrases are the key to their intellect. Mr. "Apparently," Mr. "Generally," Mrs. "Probably," Mr. "Fucking," Mrs. "Don't You Think," Mr. "As If." The President was Mr. "In Truth." Of course there are entire fashions for some words, just like the ones that for some crazy reason suddenly everyone start going about in identical shows or clothes - people just as suddenly start using one particular word or phrase. Recently the word "generally" was fashionable but now "actually" is out in front." (p. 185). I think this is the kind of observation I could have read in KOK or DFW.

There is also a great deal of humor and irony, particularly in her various appeals to the police such as the letter about various trials of animals throughout history (p. 190). She has some interesting theories: The psyche is our defense system - it makes sure we'll never understand what's going on around us. Its main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brains are enormous. For it would be impossible to carry the weight of this knowledge Because every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering. (p. 225)

This is a powerful piece of literature and I am definitely intrigued and want to read more by this author. ...more

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Mar 26, 2019 Fionnuala added it

Shelves: translated-from-polish, tokarczuk, 21st-century-classics

I've carried some William Blake verses around in a pocket of my memory for years. To say I studied them at school is probably not quite accurate since I don't remember anything I learned about Auguries of Innocence. All the same, Blake's verses lent themselves to memorizing better than many others, and so they stuck fast in my idiosyncratic mind. I loved them so much that I once inscribed a verse from Blake on a friend's birthday card convinced that To see a World in a Grain of Sand, and a Heave ...more

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Sep 20, 2019 BlackOxford rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: slavic

Natural Justice

Hypocrisy allows us to remain alive. Without it we would be forced to recognise the misery we endure and the misery we inflict. So we lie; we make evil, even if it’s necessary evil, into virtue. Untruthfulness is re-branded as ‘discretion.’ Exploitation becomes ‘providing employment.’ Nationalism hides behind a mask of religious faith. And environmental destruction is promoted as a divine right which human beings have an obligation to honour. As Mrs Janina Duszejko, Civil Engineer Natural Justice

Hypocrisy allows us to remain alive. Without it we would be forced to recognise the misery we endure and the misery we inflict. So we lie; we make evil, even if it’s necessary evil, into virtue. Untruthfulness is re-branded as ‘discretion.’ Exploitation becomes ‘providing employment.’ Nationalism hides behind a mask of religious faith. And environmental destruction is promoted as a divine right which human beings have an obligation to honour. As Mrs Janina Duszejko, Civil Engineer, English Teacher, Gnostic Astrologer, Committed Vegetarian, and translator of William Blake knows, “The whole, complex human psyche has evolved to prevent Man from understanding what he is really seeing.”

While not religious, Janina believes in cosmic order. She thinks birth, death, and the course of our lives are determined by our pre-conscious experience with the stars and the planets. Living through the long winters in the isolated mountains of Southwestern Poland have given her plenty of leisure to pursue these connections. The factual results of her research are clear: “every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering.” Her conclusion is that of William Blake himself: “Anger puts things in order and shows you the world in a nutshell; Anger restores the gift of Clarity of Vision, which it’s hard to attain in any other state... Without a doubt Anger is the source of all wisdom, for Anger has the power to exceed any limits.”

Janina is angry and she dreams of revenge - mainly against the local hunting fraternity who have killed her two dogs and any number of wild creatures whom she has befriended or admired. She is unable to break through the wall of institutional hypocrisy that the hunters have erected to protect themselves. But despite the solidarity among the local gentry, the police, the state forestry people, and even the Church, the leading hunters are found successively dead over the course of a year. Janina blames the animals and writes the authorities repeatedly to inform them of her suspicions. She doesn’t want the animals punished but forgiven as a matter of justice, for it is obvious to her if to no one else that “the world was not created for Mankind.”

Only religious fanatics and other self-serving types could argue otherwise. Oh, wait, perhaps they’re righteously angry too. Is it only hypocrites who are hypocritical? ...more

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Nov 03, 2019 Spencer Orey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The most unintentionally metal title ever??

I really enjoyed this one. I found the main character (an old woman who's obsessed with astrology but is also a pretty bad astrologer) really lovable. I mostly loved her point of view and all her little quirks.

There's a good murder mystery here and a deep meditation about our relationship to animals and hunting. Sometimes in the novel, this is direct (conversations like who are we to kill animals or judge which ones deserve to live?) and sometimes it’s ...more

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Oct 10, 2019 Diane S ☔ rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: lor-2019

3.5 "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." William Blake from the Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

The author just won the Novel Prize, announced I believe, today. This is one weird story, but somehow compelling in its strangeness. A very unusual lead character, Janina, in her sixties lives on the edge of the Czech/Polish border. She is rather a rec!use with only a few friends, b ...more

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Aug 09, 2018 Hugh rated it really liked it

Shelves: modern-classics, modern-lit, translations, read-2018

Now shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019

This is the second book by Olga Tokarczuk to be published in translation by Fitzcarraldo Editions. The previous one Flights deservedly won this year's Man Booker International prize and is my favourite of all the books I have read this year. This one is very different but just as interesting - in some ways it is closer in spirit to Primeval and Other Times, the second Tokarczuk novel to be translated into English.

The translation is by An Now shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019

This is the second book by Olga Tokarczuk to be published in translation by Fitzcarraldo Editions. The previous one Flights deservedly won this year's Man Booker International prize and is my favourite of all the books I have read this year. This one is very different but just as interesting - in some ways it is closer in spirit to Primeval and Other Times, the second Tokarczuk novel to be translated into English.

The translation is by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, who is English, so I was a little surprised by the spelling of the striking title. Those who know their William Blake well may recognise it as a quotation, and indeed Blake takes a major role in the book. The epigraphs which begin each chapter are all quotations from Blake's poems, and one character is translating Blake into Polish. At one point four attempts at translating a stanza are quoted, which must have been quite a challenge to translate back into English! In addition to the title quotation, which appears in a pivotal chapter near the end of the book, the word plough occurs twice in the book, both spelled the modern English way, once when describing a ploughed field and once for the constellation.

The narrator Janina Duszejko is a brilliant creation - a woman in her 60s who lives in an isolated hamlet near the Czech border which is almost deserted in winter. She acts as a caretaker for various summer residents and prefers animals to humans.

At the start of the book she is woken by her neighbour "Oddball" to investigate the death of another neighbour "Big Foot", a poacher who appears to have choked to death. This is the first of a number of deaths of those involved in hunting in the area, and the narrator ascribes them to the revenge of the animals, and her attempts to persuade the police to listen are largely ignored. She also believes that all of the deaths have been predicted by astrology, her other main interest.

The narrator has many other eccentricities, for example she hates her own name, particularly being addressed as Janina, and she prefers to name people for herself using nicknames unless she feels their names fit them especially well. Another quirk of the text is the quasi-Biblical usage of initial capital letters to stress particular improper nouns, for example her Ailments.

This description barely hints at how rich, allusive and atmospheric the story is, and the dark denouement is fitting. ...more

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Oct 04, 2018 Antonomasia rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2018, women-in-translation, 2019, crime, decade-2000s, central-eastern-europe, scribd, poland, paper, booker-international

Drive Your Plow has been described as one of Olga Tokarczuk's lighter novels, written between the experimental Flights and The Books of Jacob (as she said in this interview) - but this literary crime story, narrated by an eccentric animal-lover in her 60s, is still full of ideas.

Some things were easy to say about the book.

It has gorgeous descriptions of nature.

In this it's similar to the writing of Andrzej Stasiuk, another major contemporary Polish author who, like Olga Tokarczuk, left Warsaw ...more

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Sep 02, 2019 William2 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 21-ce, fiction, poland, translation, crime

If you’ve got a bit of Jane Goodall in you (as I do), try this off-beat thriller. The humor is subtle and the style beautifully stripped down. The writing exhibits a mastery of tone and narrative pacing that induced wonder and admiration in this reader.

Our storyteller is an elderly woman who, living alone in a rural area of Poland between Wrocław and the Czech border, is awakened in the dead of night by her neighbor, Oddball, to be told that another neighbor, Big Foot, is dead. The woman is ecce If you’ve got a bit of Jane Goodall in you (as I do), try this off-beat thriller. The humor is subtle and the style beautifully stripped down. The writing exhibits a mastery of tone and narrative pacing that induced wonder and admiration in this reader.

Our storyteller is an elderly woman who, living alone in a rural area of Poland between Wrocław and the Czech border, is awakened in the dead of night by her neighbor, Oddball, to be told that another neighbor, Big Foot, is dead. The woman is eccentric, but intelligent and compassionate. She has long despised Big Foot for his arrogant behavior, and reckless despoliation of The Plateau, the isolated area in which they live, and brutal treatment of his dog. She has reported him to the police, who are a laughable bit of dysfunction unto themselves. Now he is dead. After the discovery Mrs. Duszejko goes about her business. She housesits for those who use their houses only as summer retreats, whereas she is on The Plateau year round, roughing the bitter winters alone when it can reach -20 F. Though her vocabulary is laudably rich, and her understanding of the natural sciences keen, she has an incongruous fondness for astrology, of which she says, “Nothing is capable of eluding this order.” (p. 56)

She believes that her Little Ladies, that is the local deer, for she is a stalwart lover of Animal life, have conspired with other local wildlife to murder a second person; she bases this speculation on the hundreds of deer prints left in the snow near the murder scene, which she happens upon. Between these two deaths—Big Foot’s has been ruled an accidental choking; he was eating poached deer at the time—Mrs. Duszejko, a retired teacher of English, teams up with a former student, Dizzy, to consult with him as he methodically translates the collected works of William Blake into Polish. She wishes she knew Animal script so she could warn the innocent creatures away from the hunters. Then again she wishes she could be aloof to the crimes committed around her, like those a short drive away in Auschwitz who hardly know what happened there during the war. She is alas not made of such incurious stuff. She sees suffering and despairs.

Soon when visiting the police commissioner she’s raving like a PETA member: ‘“You’ll say it’s just one Boar,” I continued, “But what about the deluge of butchered meat that falls on our cities day by day like never-ending, apocalyptic rain? This rain heralds slaughter, disease, collective madness, the obfuscation and contamination of the Mind. For no human heart is capable of bearing such pain. The whole, complex human psyche has evolved to prevent Man from understanding what he is really seeing. To stop the truth from reaching him by wrapping it in illusion, in idle chatter. The world is a prison of suffering, so constructed that in order to survive one must inflict pain on others....”’ (p. 106)

The killings go on. All the victims are hunters, middle aged men. Mrs. Duszejko continues to write letters to the police in which she interprets the horoscopes of the dead, citing relevant planetary conjunctions and the like. She gets no reply. There are many twists in Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead that this summary doesn’t touch on—and let’s not forget about the final kicker! This is the work of an extraordinarily talented writer, relatively new to English speakers, whom I look forward to reading more of. Hypnotic stuff. ...more

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Apr 11, 2020 Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Jenna by: Kathleen

Shelves: mystery, fiction, european-and-uk-authors

~Most memorable main character in a book this year~

This was a different sort of novel with a different sort of heroine: A quirky, eccentric old lady who is not taken seriously by the authorities, even when a series of dead bodies turn up in their small village in Poland. She claims to have proof that it is the Animals (they're always capitalized when she speaks) taking revenge on the hunters, and backs up her claims by doing intricate astrological charts for the deceased, showing how their murde ...more

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May 10, 2020 Katie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019

When a victim is found with deerprints all around him, it seems entirely feasible that animals are committing murder.

I've finally found a murder mystery I could love. An elderly woman does battle with toxic patriarchal arrogance and self-entitlement, personified by the bloodthirsty hunting culture which prevails over her native area.

The novel is set in a bleak winter landscape in a remote part of Poland and narrated by a maverick elderly woman, a retired bridge engineer, who lives alone, studie ...more

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Dec 01, 2019 Peter Boyle rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This unconventional tale is set in rural Poland, close to the Czech border. Janina is an middle-aged woman who looks after a bunch of holiday homes in the mountains. She is quite an eccentric individual, obsessed with astrology and preferring to call people by nicknames she invents. When her crotchety neighbour Big Foot dies unexpectedly one night, she helps her other neighbour Oddball dress the corpse. However in the weeks that follow, more bodies start turning up, and the police are mystified. ...more

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Apr 29, 2019 Sam Quixote rated it did not like it

Hunters is dying in the Polish hills - animals getting revenge? Dat’s what totally not nutso old laydee Janina thinks!

This was my first and last time reading anything by award-winning (was the award for Giantest Poop Published That Year?) Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead’s premise kinda sounds like a supernatural murder mystery but it’s not. It’s basically just a screwball old lady muttering her disapproval of hunters and hunting in general while witteri ...more

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Mar 13, 2020 Trudie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: crime, read-harder-2020, translated

Dear Olga.
Things are not working out between us. I have consulted my star charts and it reveals that my third house is blocked by a giant cosmic loom. While I can now weave cosmic carpets, it also unfortunately makes me immune to your charms. Perhaps if I had been reading this while Mercury was ascending or by the light of a gibbous moon things might have worked out better ?
For now I must find a way out of my third house and take Flight(s) to greener pastures.

P.S I tried, I really tried.

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Oct 18, 2019 Jibran rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nobel, polish

For every thing that lives is Holy.

I’ve thought long and hard what to make of the lead protagonist, one Janina Duszejko, an eccentric woman on the cusp of old age living in an isolated hamlet surrounded by mountains and forests along the Polish-Czech border; a woman whose love for animals surpasses everything she might feel for her fellow human beings, and who believes that the apparently defenceless animals possess the means and the intelligence to take revenge on the humans who inflict cruelty For every thing that lives is Holy.

I’ve thought long and hard what to make of the lead protagonist, one Janina Duszejko, an eccentric woman on the cusp of old age living in an isolated hamlet surrounded by mountains and forests along the Polish-Czech border; a woman whose love for animals surpasses everything she might feel for her fellow human beings, and who believes that the apparently defenceless animals possess the means and the intelligence to take revenge on the humans who inflict cruelty and death upon them for sports.

Janina may be suffering from many “Ailments” but she is sturdy, mobile, and full of wit. She loves Blake, the champion of animal rights and nature (every chapter starts with an epigram of Blake’s verses) and believes in an astrological cosmic order in spite of being godless (well, you can only be godless if God exists, she’d say). But there’s one thing that sets her apart from everyone around her: She is an animal rights extremist without realising it, which is a common characteristic of all kinds of extremists!

This novel packs a lot. It is easy to dismiss it as the ravings of a crazy old woman holding up a nasty worldview, a true Oddball if there was one, which is something the author foresaw and afforded preemptive defence by arguing that that’s because society does not respect old women and take seriously anything they have to say. At another point she defends her contrasting lack of sympathy for humans who kill animals by holding up the idea of the sanctity of all life, though not very convincingly.

Antonomasia’s review was key to understanding the context of the politics of the novel, in particular the pact between hunting fraternities and the Catholic Church in Poland which has enabled and protected "ethical hunting" as a cultural practice having religious sanction. The sermon of Father what-was-his-name is modeled on actual speeches of holy men.

That said, I still feel the novel takes a very black-and-white approach in how it deals with hard questions. I wasn’t looking for a counter-argument but a more nuanced narrative that would seek out something more profound, more philosophical, than a straight-up denunciation of hunters and, by extended logic, everyone involved in the preparation and consumption of meat, as evil people.

But there is an argument to be made that the author has designed Janina to uncover the full extent of moral double standards, and the sheer hypocrisy of the political as well as religious elite when it comes to these issues and, in doing so, has compelled us to ask difficult questions about the nature of hunting vs poaching or even ethical slaughtering, about the exploitation of nature for commercial greed, about the universal or selective sanctity of life - and about being the only crazy person among all the sane people. Or is it the other way round?

So who would you support in a world where innocent animals had the will and the brains to take revenge against the sapiens who kill them without a shred of remorse? Don't answer if you're a human, Janina would say!

Make of that what you will.

One has to tell people what to think. There's no alternative. Otherwise someone else will do it

October '19 ...more

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Feb 13, 2022 Libby rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: library-loan, published-2000-2010, literary, nature, read-in-2022, translation

Olga Tokarczuk’s novel is many-layered. There’s the obvious layer in which Janina Dusezjkl’s neighbor and community hunters are dying. In this very obvious layer, Dusezjkl is an older woman, who lives on the outside of community, having a few friends that are also considered outsiders, Oddball, Dizzy, and Good News. She frequently refers to astrology and has an intense bond with animals. She decries what she considers the waste of animal life through hunting.

“The nastiest criminal has a soul, b Olga Tokarczuk’s novel is many-layered. There’s the obvious layer in which Janina Dusezjkl’s neighbor and community hunters are dying. In this very obvious layer, Dusezjkl is an older woman, who lives on the outside of community, having a few friends that are also considered outsiders, Oddball, Dizzy, and Good News. She frequently refers to astrology and has an intense bond with animals. She decries what she considers the waste of animal life through hunting.

“The nastiest criminal has a soul, but not you, beautiful Deer, nor you, Boar, nor you, wild Goose, nor you, Pig, nor you, Dog.”

For Dusezjkl, the life of an animal, its motives, and energies are pure. It is the human, especially the hunter, who lives a suspect life with questionable motives.

Another layer of the novel is its connection to the work of William Blake. Dusezjkl and her friend Dizzy spend time translating the work of Blake. A painter and poet from the Romantic era, William Blake was considered by many to be mad and it was only after his death that his work became known for its genius. The title of the novel comes from one of Blake’s poems, ‘Proverbs of Hell.’

“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.”

If you think the poem sounds mysterious and enigmatic, I agree. It is only through reading an analysis that I learned that Blake intended his proverbs to provoke and encourage the questioning of accepted norms. Honoring the poles of opposition, the forces of contrarianism were for Blake, the means of progress.

Another layer of the novel has to do with the theme of usefulness. What things and people do we cast aside when we feel they are no longer useful? One of her friends in the novel asks her, “What have you done in life?” And we’re reminded that we esteem people for where they’ve gone to school or what their career is or how big and shiny their home is. Perhaps we should challenge those ideas and learn some philosophy from a madwoman.

As more murders occur, Dusezjkl tells the police that animals are involved in seeking revenge against the hunters. Is she mad? Or is she genius? In order to fully absorb the novel, it helps to consider both. With delightfully lucid prose, Tokarezuk delineates an unforgettable protagonist. This is such an elegant maze of a book with more pathways to explore than I could fathom. Deliciously provocative. ...more

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Dec 12, 2009 Agnieszka rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own-a-copy, reviewed, 2009, 2017, tokarczuk

For every thing that lives is Holy.

The action of the novel, the title could be translated as a quote from Blake’s Drive Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead, takes place in a remote mountain settlement in the beautiful Kotlina Kłodzka. That quiet, tranquil location suddenly is a place of murders of local hunters, with only animals’ tracks left on the crime scene. Revange of the game?

This one was promoted as an ecological and moral thriller with strong feministic and anarchic accents. But you c
For every thing that lives is Holy.

The action of the novel, the title could be translated as a quote from Blake’s Drive Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead, takes place in a remote mountain settlement in the beautiful Kotlina Kłodzka. That quiet, tranquil location suddenly is a place of murders of local hunters, with only animals’ tracks left on the crime scene. Revange of the game?

This one was promoted as an ecological and moral thriller with strong feministic and anarchic accents. But you can read it as well as a satire on provinionalism and insular way of thinking, as a critique of hipocrysy of clergy and local policymakers, accusation of upstart holidaymakers who think that nature is only for their pleasure, opposition to maltreating the old and weak, objection to misogyny and finally call for justice and mercy for all living creatures and respect for the nature world.

Look at this scene. It’s called display of trophies of the hunt. Hunters would say it means respect and tribute for animals but I find it only ridiculous and barbaric. (view spoiler)

Drive Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead has some unconventional protagonists with one particularly standing out from the crowd. Janina Duszejko is a bit eccentric not to say quirky old lady. She used to be an engineer but now after retiring looks after houses of absent neighbours, teaches English and translates William Blake's poetry, by the way trying to apply his views to a modern way of living. She also is a homebred astrologist and an ardent advocate of animals.

In my estimation it is not the best Tokarczuk’s novel but for sure it didn’t waste my time either. It has distinctive for her elements of magical realism, shows the beauty of the particular region in southern Poland, near Czech border, and its mountainous landscape, here in the wintry scenery and windy weather. Every chapter starts with quote from Blake what, in the long run, resulted in immersing myself in his strange, visionary world.

Even if you pay not too much attention to animals and their rights or to nature in general you still have something to ponder about. The message Tokarczuk delivers here is rather clear though the way she manages it it’s not always satisfying to me. Here and there strikes me as being unbelievable, at times it's guilty of naivety but nonetheless covers some important issues and rises even more questions. It makes us think of distinction between poaching and hunting, is that really any ?, of mindless acts against nature, of violence and cruelty towards animals and our double moral standards. Why do we find it unacceptable to tar suffering of people and animals with the same brush? Aren't we all the same under the skin? Why people, especially older women are so often object of dismissive remarks when they act on behalf of animals and their rights? Why do we think that hunting is wrong but a cutlet on our plate rarely makes us think about living creature once it was? And what do you think about slaughterhouse, poultry farm, or fox one? And when you answered yourself to these questions and agreed that killing animals is wrong thing what about slaying the evildoers, then?

3,5/5 ...more

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Jun 27, 2020 Debbie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, mystery, literature-east-european, 2020-reads

Initially I pictured this story taking place over a century ago, so I was thrown for a loop when I realized that the setting is modern day.

"Pros" about this story:
1. A character-driven mystery! Janina Duszejko, the protagonist, comes off sounding like an eccentric old crackpot to the villagers (and probably to some readers), but I found her rather likeable! I loved her subtle sense-of-humor, and I had a personal affinity for her experiences as an older person. Her thoughts that being a teacher i ...more

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May 03, 2020 Jo (The Book Geek) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mental-illness-and-the-demons

This book was an oddity, but it hit a few of the right notes for me. I had never heard of Olga Tokarczuk until I saw this book knocking about on goodreads, and I bought it purely because of the title. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a unique title, and made me immediately want it.

I actually liked Janina, the main character, and it was interesting that the story went on inside her head, but as the plot thickened, it became somewhat tiresome, and I craved things from another perspect ...more

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Apr 04, 2020 Emily B rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The writing in this novel was both hypnotic and poetic. So much so that whenever astrology was mentioned I found myself very relaxed, almost to a frisson or asmr state.

When reading I often think about the writer, I imagine them trying to write the character’s narrative and become the character. However in this case I didn’t so much. The way in which the protagonist viewed the world was eccentric but also charming, while the narrative felt natural and authentic.

When reading it felt like a 4 sta ...more

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Mar 02, 2019 ·Karen· rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourites, poland, best-of-2019

Janina= gift of god, god's grace.
No wonder Mrs Duszejko rejects her given name as unsuitable.

One has to tell people what to think. There's no alternative. Otherwise someone else will do it.

Think about that. As we are instructed in the first chapter's heading: NOW PAY ATTENTION.
See? there is an alternative. Someone else will do it.
There's more, so much more (obviously!), no I don't just mean more words, more pages, I mean more that made me gurgle with laughter and delight.

He came to me i

...more

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Sep 08, 2018 Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer rated it did not like it

Shelves: 2018, 2019-mbi-shortlist, 2020-international-dublin-literary

Now shortlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.

I am hoping this is not the book cited for her Nobel Prize win.

Why is it that old women … women of your age are so concerned about animals? Aren’t there any people left to take care of?

I could sense his disgust as he ... cast negative judgement on my taste

This book is a noir style mystery novel written by the author of the Man Booker International winning Flights – and at first the clear mystery that the reader is faced with i ...more

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Oct 30, 2019 Doug rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Update: Just to state that I have now seen the film version mentioned below and it is INCREDIBLE!! Beautifully adapted, directed, acted and the cinematography is exquisite.

What an unexpected delight - I was wary of the most recent Nobel Prize winner, as I had heard how difficult Flights was, so thought this shorter book might be a better introduction to her oeuvre. But for sure I wasn't expecting this bleak, but very clever take on the murder mystery, complete with the most unreliable of narrato ...more

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Mar 28, 2020 Elle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, 2019

Okay, Olga Tokarczuk. I get it now. I had no idea what type of book would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but this left quite the impression. All I can say is that this novel had maybe the best payoff for any book I remember reading.

I absolutely adore (Janina) Duszejko. Her character just became more and more likable to me as the story went on. With every new idiosyncrasy revealed, I was increasingly enamored. By the end there was really nothing that she could do which would turn me o ...more

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Feb 02, 2020 Marchpane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: women-in-translation, read-in-2020, read-harder-2020

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a strange little novel, one which I find myself at a loss to describe. It’s sort of a murder mystery, but mostly it’s a character study about Janina, an astrology fanatic with a bone to pick about illegal hunting in her sleepy part of rural Poland.

In an odd way, this novel reminded me of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The two books (and their authors) are very different in terms of plot and tone and writing style, but I think o ...more

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May 26, 2018 Katia N rated it really liked it

It is the first novel I’ve read by Olga Tokarzchuk and I’ve read it in Ukrainian - the closest to the original Polish from the languages I know.

So-called ironic detectives were very popular in Eastern Europe in the 90s. It was sort of sub-genre normally written by a woman with a female protagonist investigating a certain mystery. But the main feature in those books was their ability to make you laugh out loud and their reading accessibility. I remember my favourite books from this genre were by It is the first novel I’ve read by Olga Tokarzchuk and I’ve read it in Ukrainian - the closest to the original Polish from the languages I know.

So-called ironic detectives were very popular in Eastern Europe in the 90s. It was sort of sub-genre normally written by a woman with a female protagonist investigating a certain mystery. But the main feature in those books was their ability to make you laugh out loud and their reading accessibility. I remember my favourite books from this genre were by a Polish writer Joanna Chmielewska.

I think what Tokarzchuk is doing in this novel is taking the form and using it for more profound purpose: dealing with the serious issues which affect us all but ensuring she reaches a wider audience.

The main character and the one who tells the story is a middle-aged eccentric, but instantly likable lady Yanina Duzheyko. She is retired English teacher leaving in a small village in a very picturesque part of Poland on the border with Chezch republic. She lives alone but she has got a small number of friends who are very distinctive people struggling to fit into society or comply with prevailing social norms. But i would not call them misfits - they are just little different, have a tender and unprotected souls. For example, Dionisiy, her former pupil and now grown up man, who works for the local police’s IT dept, but spends his free time translating William Blake. And Yanina helps him at that… In parallel with these idealistic surroundings and pastimes, a series of murders start to happen…

But if you look for a thrilling mystery, i do not think it is the main point here. It is more about one person rebellation against the existing world order. It is about challenging the superiority of people above other creatures. It is about our place as a human beings in the world. In a strange way it reminded me The Vegetarian. The style and the way how story is told could not be more different. But the pathos and the values of these two books are certainly shared. This zeitgeist of ecology as vehicle for reconsidering our place in the world is certainly penetrating the literature internationally. There is another recent novel The Overstory by Richard Powers which apparently talks about the power of trees. (I have not read it yet).

Another theme is indoctrination of young children into some powerful ideology. It’s used to be communism, now it’s Catholicism in Poland. The novel depicts it in a quite scary way. Overall, the novel takes clear anticlerical stand. I could see how the author could anger the church: she compiles the speech by a cleric in the novel (quite off-putting) from the real speeches of this sort.

I do not know why people mention magic realism. I have not notice any magic realism. There are certainly some elements of mysticism with Yanina’s trust in astrology for example. It is a typical eastern european, erudite and poignant little novel which effortlessly mixes Blake, astrology, entomology and many other things; it talks about very serious issues, but does it in a accessible way.

Some quotes:

“All complicated human psyche has developed in order not to let a human being to comprehend what she sees in reality”

“Each thing one can believe in is the certain image of reality”

“People could understand only what they imagine themselves.”
...more

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Jan 28, 2021 Barbara rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

"Have you lost your minds? Or your hearts? Have you still got hearts?"

Are thoughts that might be called insane by some, often the saner or more ethical, and what is accepted as sane thinking, sometimes insanity?

Mrs. D. ( I dare not call her Janina) is an older woman of many dimensions. Living in an area outside a small Polish village she seems content with her life, except for her abhorrence of hunting and its disregard for life. She is a caretaker of local homes, nurturer of children and plants ...more

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Aug 14, 2021 Henk rated it liked it

Entertaining, although the central murder mystery has a very clear resolution from early on in the book. The love of animals and morality of our usage of them is well executed, as is the way we as society don’t take old people serious.
’You know what, sometimes it seems to me we’re living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves… And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. Th Entertaining, although the central murder mystery has a very clear resolution from early on in the book. The love of animals and morality of our usage of them is well executed, as is the way we as society don’t take old people serious.
’You know what, sometimes it seems to me we’re living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves… And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.’

Janina Duszjeko, an old lady living in a nearly abandoned village at the Czech border, fond of astrology, nicknames and animals, is asked to dress her dead neighbour. So begins Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Nobel prize winner Olga Tokarczuk.

Janina, who adamantly doesn't want to be called that way and also thinks of nicknames for all those around her, is really a character. We follow her reflections on her small village, with more and more people dead. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde comes to mind during reading, and the work of William Blake recurs frequently. Not the the book is unoriginal; I can for instance not recall a more horrid death than being invaded by bugs due to pheromones.

In the end I loved the prose, and the ridiculously detailed astrological mumbo jumbo, but the novel just didn't hit the heart for me, hence 3.5 stars rounded down but a plethora of strong quotes:

Quotes:
I’d started to put on my boots, but that terrible grey morning alarmed me. Sometimes I feel as if we’re living inside a tomb, a large, spacious one for lots of people. I looked at the world wreathed in grey Murk, cold and nasty. The prison is not outside, but inside each of us. Perhaps we simply don’t know how to live without it.

As I gazed at the black-and-white landscape of the Plateau I realized that sorrow is an important word for defining the world. It lies at the foundations of everything, it is the fifth element, the quintessence.

If I hadn’t known her so well, I’m sure I would have read her books. But as I did know her, I was afraid to open them. What if I found myself described in them in a way that I couldn’t fathom? Or my favourite places, which for her are something completely different from what they are to me? In a way, people like her, those who wield a pen, can be dangerous. At once a suspicion of fakery springs to mind – that such a Person is not him or herself, but an eye that’s constantly watching, and whatever it sees it changes into sentences; in the process it strips reality of its most essential quality – its inexpressibility.

Sometimes it’s as if I’m composed of nothing but symptoms of illness, I am a phantom built out of pain.

She had such a deep tan that she looked as if she’d just been removed from the barbecue.

At the same time I wish to appeal to the gentlemen of the Police not to shy away from the idea that the perpetrators of the above-mentioned tragic incidents could be Animals. I have prepared some information that casts a little light on these matters, for it is a long time since we have had cases of crimes committed by these creatures.

I must start with the Bible, in which it is clearly stated that if an Ox kills a woman or a man, it should be stoned to death. Saint Bernard excommunicated a swarm of Bees, whose buzzing prevented him from working. Bees also had to answer for the death of a Man from the city of Worms in the year 846. The local parliament condemned them to death by suffocation. In 1394 in France some Pigs killed and ate a child. The Sow was sentenced to hang, but her six children were spared, taking their young age into consideration. In 1639 in France, a court in Dijon sentenced a Horse for killing a Man. There have been cases not only of Murder, but also of crimes against nature. Thus in Basel in 1471 there was a lawsuit against a Hen, which laid strangely coloured eggs. It was condemned to death by burning, for being in cahoots with the devil. Here I must add my own comment, that intellectual limitation and human cruelty know no bounds.
…
In 1659 in Italy the owners of vineyards destroyed by Caterpillars submitted to them a written summons to court. Pieces of paper with the wording of the summons were nailed to trees in the area, so the Caterpillars might become acquainted with the indictment.
...
In citing these recognized historical facts, I demand that my Suppositions and Conjectures be given serious consideration. They demonstrate that similar thinking has occurred in European jurisdiction before, and that they can be taken as a precedent. ...more

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Apr 19, 2019 Abbie | ab_reads rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-around-the-world, translations-read-in-2019, favourites

Thank you SO much @fitzcarraldoeditions for sending me this lovely copy of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - I absolutely loved it and I wouldn’t be surprised if Tokarczuk nabbed the Man Booker International Prize for the second year running. She’s certainly found a new fan in me, and I’ll be seeking out her other books.
.
Described as a subversive, eco-thriller, Drive Your Plow follows Janina (but she doesn’t consider that her real name) Duszejko as she recounts the disappearance of he ...more

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Mar 27, 2020 Kevin Kelsey rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-2020

“But why should we have to be useful, and for what reason? Who divided the world into useless and useful, and by what right? Does a thistle have no right to life, or a Mouse that eats the grain in a warehouse? What about Bees and Drones, weeds and roses? Whose intellect can have had the audacity to judge who is better, and who worse? A large tree, crooked and full of holes, survives for centuries without being cut down, because nothing could possibly be made out of it. This example should rai “But why should we have to be useful, and for what reason? Who divided the world into useless and useful, and by what right? Does a thistle have no right to life, or a Mouse that eats the grain in a warehouse? What about Bees and Drones, weeds and roses? Whose intellect can have had the audacity to judge who is better, and who worse? A large tree, crooked and full of holes, survives for centuries without being cut down, because nothing could possibly be made out of it. This example should raise the spirits of people like us. Everyone knows the profit to be reaped from the useful, but nobody knows the benefit to be gained from the useless.”

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is technically a murder mystery but I wouldn’t call it a whodunit. “Who done it” becomes abundantly clear through the narrative, but it’s much more interested in character and theme than narrative. Mainly in the protagonist Janina, her coterie of misfits, their peculiarities and ways in which they are alienated and marginalized by the small Polish town wherein they reside.

It has a lot to say about the invisibility of women past a certain age, guilt, revenge, animal rights, and mental illness. I found the setting fascinating, and loved the use of Astrology as a handhold grasped by the disenfranchised stuck in out of control situations. The one thing conspiracy theories and religions seem to have in common is a message of some Power or Other that is in charge and guiding things. Whether it’s the stars and planets, the Illuminati, or omnipotent God(s) — Imagining some sort of top level control in a chaotic universe, however illusory, brings temporary comfort but also an exacerbation of the underlying condition.

I can’t say much more than this without spoiling the experience, but I will say it handles these themes with so much grace and respect for the characters involved. The novel is abundantly caring, and never too on-the-nose. Honestly, I would say that it’s handled so well you could even come to an entirely different conclusion than I have, and it would be just as valid.

I loved this story and all it had to say. ...more

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About Olga Tokarczuk

Olga Tokarczuk

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Olga Tokarczuk is one of Poland's most celebrated and beloved authors, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Man Booker International Prize, as well as her country's highest literary honor, the Nike. She is the author of eight novels and two short story collections, and has been translated into more than thirty languages.
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“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we're living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what's good and what isn't, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves... And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.” — 162 likes

“The human psyche evolved in order to defend itself against seeing the truth. To prevent us from catching sight of the mechanism. The psyche is our defense system - it makes sure we'll never understand what's going on around us. Its main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brains are enormous. For it would be impossible for us to carry the weight of this knowledge. Because every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering.” — 90 likes

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