Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead

Author: Olga Tokarczuk

Stock information

General Fields

  • : 37.00 NZD
  • : 9781925773088
  • : Text Publishing Company
  • : Text Publishing Company
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  • : 0.342
  • : May 2018
  • : ---length:- '23.4'width:- '15.3'units:- Centimeters
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  • : books

Special Fields

  • :
  • :
  • : Olga Tokarczuk
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  • : Paperback
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  • :
  • : English
  • : 891.8538
  • : 256
  • : FA
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  • : Antonia Lloyd-Jones
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Barcode 9781925773088
9781925773088

Local Description

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Janina ("don’t like my first name, so please don’t address me by it") Duszejko is in her sixties and lives in a remote Polish village. An ex-engineer, she teaches children English at the local school on a very part-time basis and is the caretaker of the holiday homes closed up for the winter. It’s mid-winter and Duszejko is busy with her horoscopes, translating William Blake with her friend Dizzy, clearing snow, fixing leaks, and keeping an eye on the forest animals. She has names for her neighbours, names which reflect their character: Big Foot for the weasel of a man with big feet who traps animals cruelly, Oddball for her large-statured yet very particular closest neighbour, Black Coat for his son - the local detective, Good News for the woman who runs the charity shop, and so on. She has a close affinity with nature and with the animals that live around her - she calls the deer the Young Ladies, and her dogs (who have recently disappeared) are referred to as her Little Girls. Drawing on Blake’s philosophy of nature, voicing her beliefs in the ideal equitable relationship between human and animal (a philosophy that many of her hunting neighbours have no time for), and using astrology - the alignments and ascendencies of planets and stars and birth dates to predict outcomes for her community, Duszejko has firm opinions, which she has no qualms about sharing, on how people should behave, on traditional Polish culture, and on the importance of nature to the health (intellectual and emotional) of human psyche. Overlay this with a series of murders and you have a very compelling novel. Mrs Duszejko starts investigating, drawing together facts and suppositions based upon birth dates and star signs. The first to tumble is Big Foot, choking on a deer bone. As more hunters fall, Duszejko is convinced that this is the revenge of the animals, that they have risen up against the human hunters who pursue them mercilessly. As the net tightens, the villagers become increasingly paranoid, and rumours of corruption and bribery are rife. This is a blackly comic novel which investigates pressing ideas about the nature of traditions, cultural stereotypes and the role of the outsider, the hypocrisy of the church and other institutions of authority, and the impact of development on ecological structures. As Duszejko gets closer to the truth, her Ailments (never fully explained) become increasingly severe and her accusations extreme. Ostracised by her community she is considered a 'mad' woman. Yet it is her insistence that will lead to a revelation that will shock everyone, including her few loyal friends. Throughout the novel there are references to Blake’s writings: each chapter starts with a quoted verse, and the title of the book comes directly from the ‘Proverbs of Hell’. Olga Tokarczuk’s second book to appear in translation is an intriguing and feisty exploration of fate and free will, of cultural politics and personal endeavours, of injustice and ultimate revenge. Her first novel to be translated into English, Flights, won the Man Booker International Prize earlier this year. With more works planned for translation, Tokarczuk is an author to discover, enjoy and be challenged by.
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Review: 'A magnificent writer.' * Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize in Literature laureate 2015 *
'A strongly voiced existential thriller.' * Guardian *
'A moral thriller that will keep you guessing until its very last page.' * Culture.pl *
'This dazzling writer...feels the heartbeat of the natural world...one of the exhilarations of this novel is working through a complex truth about living among others.' * Monthly *
'A blend of fairy tale and murder mystery, Tokarczuk explores how we assign privilege and sanity to some over others as her astrology-obsessed, animal-loving protagonist demands to be heard.' * TIME *
'I thrilled to this story-a dark, strange, comic, twisted masterpiece...It's a great narrative voice, and I loved the book from the first page.' * Elizabeth Gilbert *
'Brilliant, black-comic, eccentric writing. A novelist I only recently discovered, who is fully worthy of her Nobel Prize.' * Salman Rushdie *
'Tokarczuk raises essential questions about whose voices are privileged above others.' * TIME *
'A genre-defying novel, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is part investigative thriller and part fairytale, with biting social critique and a wicked sense of humor.' * Book Riot *
'Wonderfully weird...Despite its highbrow laurels, Tokarczuk's novel reads more like a Slavic episode of Murder, She Wrote than a literary homework assignment.' * Chatelaine *
'A dark and fun mystery, a feminist comedy, plus a primer on existentialism and animal rights. It's the mix of high and low, humor and darkness that makes Tokarczuk such a remarkable chronicler of range of human emotions.' * Literary Hub *
 

Description

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead takes place in a remote Polish village, where Duszejko, an eccentric woman in her sixties, recounts the events surrounding the disappearance of her two dogs. When members of a local hunting club are found murdered, she becomes involved in the investigation. Duszejko is reclusive, preferring the company of animals to people; she's unconventional, believing in the stars, and she is fond of the poetry of William Blake, from whose work the title of the book is taken.Filled with wonderful characters like Oddball, Big Foot, Black Coat, Dizzy and Boros, this subversive, entertaining noir novel, by 'one of Europe's major humanist writers' (Guardian), offers thought-provoking ideas on our perceptions of madness, injustice against marginalised people, animal rights, the hypocrisy of traditional religion, belief in predestination--and getting away with murder.Shortlisted Man Booker International 2019  

Awards

Prizes: Short-listed for European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Literature Prize 2019 and Man Booker International Prize 2019 (UK) and Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2019 (Australia) and PEN Translation Prize 2020 (United States) and International Dublin Literary Award 2020 (Ireland). Long-listed for National Book Awards, Translated Literature 2019 (United States) and PEN Translation Prize 2019 (United States) and Fiction, Best Translated Book Awards 2020 (United States).