Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: A Novel [L0073]

2019 - HCDJ Excellent condition. 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?

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "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? This is an utter delight to read. I enjoyed being in the head of this marvellously unreliable narrator, smirked at her many amusing observations, her interactions with the people in her life and the natural world. What an original voice! The way she capitalizes certain words, assigns her own names to people, ponders the proverbs of William Blake. Janina is someone I will not soon forget."; "Sly, peculiar and quite funny. This novel is structured as a murder mystery and features a quite unusual protagonist. The narrator is an older woman who is living deep in a forest near a rural resort in the Czech Republic. This tale is darkly entertaining, deeply disturbing, and quite innovative. Excellent!"; "Drive your plow over the bones of the dead is one of William Blake's Proverbs of Hell. It's a good title for Tokarczuk's story. Though I'm not well versed in William Blake I thought this was a creative way to talk about and use Blake's poems and letters. There's a good murder mystery here and a deep meditation about our relationship to animals and hunting. Kudos to the author, and, just as importantly, the translator. Both did magnificent work. Dark, lyrical , and completely immersive."