Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: A Novel

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Penguin, Aug 13, 2019 - Fiction - 288 pages
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?
 

Contents

Now Pay Attention
1
Testosterone Autism
17
Perpetual Light
35
Deaths
45
A Light in the Rain
61
Trivia and Banalities
81
A Speech to a Poodle
95
Uranus in Leo
111
Cucujus Haematodes
145
The Singing of Bats
159
The Vengeful Beast
179
The Night Archer
193
The Fall
211
Saint Hubert
227
The Photograph
253
The Damsel
267

The Largest in the Smallest
133

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About the author (2019)

Olga Tokarczuk has won the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Man Book International Prize, among many other honors. She is the author of a dozen works of fiction, two collections of essays, and a children’s book; her work has been translated into fifty languages.

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