Book Report: Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead

23. Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead (2009), translated by Antonia Lloyd Jones (2018) (10/31/19)

What an odd and compelling book! I picked it up three days ago, and it kept calling me back, ultimately becoming unputdownable.

It is, simplistically, a murder mystery, though it is much more than that. Set on a plateau on the Czech-Polish border, the story is narrated by 60-ish Duszejko—she hates her given name, Janina, and in fact considers most given names useless, so she renames people in her head: her neighbors Big Foot and Oddball; her student Dizzy; a friend Good News, who runs a used clothing store. She also thinks in capital letters, telling stories of Animals like Mouse, Frog, and Wolf, describing Twilight and cosmic Catastrophe. And she relates her deep emotions, as in a scene where she confronts some hunters:

"What the hell is going on here?" I shouted. . . .
 "Mrs. Duszejko, please don't come any closer, it's dangerous. Please move away from here. We're shooting."
 I waved my hands in front of his face.
 "No, it's you who should get out of here. Otherwise I'll call the Police."
 Another one detached himself from the line formation and came up to us; I didn't know him. He was dressed in classic hunting gear, with a hat. The line of men moved on, pointing their shotguns ahead of them.
 "There's no need, madam," he said politely. "The Police are already here." He smiled patronizingly. Indeed, I could see the pot-bellied figure of the Commandant in the distance.
 "What is it?" someone shouted.
 "Nothing, it's just the old lady from Luftzug. She wants to call the Police," he said, with a note of irony in his voice.
 I felt hatred toward him.
 "Mrs. Duszejko, please don't be foolish," said Moustachio amicably. "We really are shooting here."
 "You've no right to shoot at living Creatures!" I shouted at the top of my voice. The wind tore the words from my mouth and carried them across the entire Plateau.
 "It's all right, please go home. We're just shooting pheasants," Moustachio reassured me, as if he didn't understand my protest. The other man added in a sugary tone: "Don't argue with her, she's crazy."
 At that point I felt a surge of Anger, genuine, not to say Divine Anger. It flooded me from inside in a burning-hot wave. This energy made me feel great, as if it were lifting me off the ground, a mini Big Bang within the universe of my body. There was a fire burning within me, like a neutron star. I sprang forward and pushed the Man in the silly hat so hard that he fell onto the snow, completely taken by surprise. And when Moustachio rushed to his aid, I attacked him too, hitting him on the shoulder with all my might. He groaned with pain. I am not a feeble girl.

Yes, she's funny too, in an unironic way. Duszejko suffers from Ailments, and she has occasional hallucinatory episodes that set her back, but eventually she always comes out swinging again. When, at the beginning of her story, a neighbor is found dead, having choked on a bone from a hunted deer, she wonders if the Deer themselves aren't taking revenge. More deaths occur, and her Theory, which she shares with the local Police in lengthy letters, expands.

Besides being a whodunit, it is a telling exploration of Polish society, of human foibles, of the meaning of it all. The title is from William Blake, who is also featured in chapter epigraphs and as a theme throughout as Duszejko and Dizzy undertake a translation of his works into Polish. It's a wonderful book.

In 2019, Tokarczuk, who has written fifteen books (only four of which have been translated into English), was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for her "narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life." Now I need to read Flights, which in 2018 won the Man Booker International Prize.