Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

by Olga Tokarczuk

We were so very much alike. So fragile, impermanent, and easily destroyed. We trustingly went to and fro beneath the sky, which had nothing good in store for us.

Spring is just a short interlude, after which the mighty armies of death advance; they’re already besieging the city walls.

If one takes a close look at each fragment of a moment, one migh...

Our loved ones will leave us, the memory of them will dissolve in the tumult; nothing will remain. Just a few clothes in the wardrobe and someone in a photograph, no longer recognized. The most precious memories will...

I noticed a pregnant girl sitting on a bench, reading a newspaper, and suddenly it occurred to me what a blessing it is to be ignorant. How could one...

There are some people at whom one only has to glance for one’s throat to tighten and one’s eyes to fill with tears of emotion.

Boros’s presence reminded me what it’s like to live with someone. And how very awkward it is. How much it diverts you from your own thoughts and distracts you. How another Person starts to irritate you without actually doing anything annoying, but simply by being there.

For people of my age, the places that they truly loved and to which they once belonged are no longer there. The places of their childhood and youth have ceased to exist, the villages where they went on holiday, the parks with uncomfortable benches where their first loves blossomed, the cities, cafés and houses of their past.

“Are you religious?” I had to put the question. “Yes,” he replied proudly. “I’m an atheist.”