Drive your plow over the bones of the dead

Hello!

Polish author Olga Tokarczuk won the Booker Prize for a previous novel, Flights.  Originally published in Polish in 2009, it was only last year that  Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was translated into English and received wider distribution.  Tokarczuk is an intellectual and  one of the most critically acclaimed novelists living today.

The novel presents Janina Duszeko, an aging woman living alone in a rural community near the Czech border, an eccentric activist who defends animals. When a series of murders of local hunters mystifies the community, she presents an argument to the authorities that the animals have risen up in self defense.

Drive Your Plow is a good read with an unusual plot and many fascinating characters. Although a literary novel that concerns the plight of animals and the environment, touches of humour, an unexpected plot twist and a late-life romance make it a more entertaining read than many trips through the human situation.  I especially enjoyed her letters to the indifferent authorities, presenting the murders as arising naturally from the confluence of astrological influences.  Like many Eastern European novels and movies, "the authorities" are portrayed with acid sarcasm. Highly recommended for people who like literary novels in translation that aren't too experimental.

Here is a hiking photo from Lake O'Hara,  a remote mountainous area.