🌿🦮🌲 Olga Tokarczuk "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead"
The author is a Polish writer, winner of the International Booker Prize and a Nobel Prize in Literature (not for this novel). Just a reminder: a Nobel doesn’t necessarily mean the author is amazing or the book is wildly engaging — we’ve been through that before.
Let’s start with the Blake obsession. William Blake — 18th-century English poet and mystic — is deeply woven into the fabric of the story. The title is a line from one of his poems (I think?), and one of the protagonist’s few friends is working on translating Blake’s work.
So what kind of book is this? Kind of a detective story… but not really (how did I end up reading three books like that in a row?).
Our main character is Janina Duszejko, a middle-aged woman living in a remote Polish village called Janina. She’s into astrology, deeply loves animals, is very much an outsider, and considered a bit unhinged by the locals (not entirely without reason). The story is told from her perspective. A suspicious number of deaths happen in her village, and Janina decides to “help” the investigation — while also offering us a very peculiar, highly personal view of the world.
What I loved most was the writing — the way nature is described, the strange yet poetic reflections, the metaphors, the atmosphere… it all pulls you in like a dream. After a while, it even feels like the plot is secondary.
Also: Janina is very much a delulu, always theorizing, imagining things, drawing strange conclusions — and we believe her, because we’re inside her head. But what’s madness and what’s not? That’s for you to decide.
I found it fascinating, and honestly a bit heartbreaking. Her eco-activism struck a nerve — and Olga’s writing is powerful. This book surprised me in the best way.