Waking up from a nightmare, Janina imparts a life lesson: “The old method for dealing with bad dreams is to tell them aloud above the toilet bowl, and then flush them away.”Ĭertain sentences in the very beginning make the reader wonder if the novel is about to veer toward the fantastic – upon finding and undressing the cadaver of the man she calls Big Foot (because of the big prints he leaves in the snow), she firmly declares that he could not be human, as he has the feet of a demon. The narrator’s discourse is, as one would expect in a crime novel, bleak and melancholic at time, but it is also bursting with hilarious phrases. The point of view does not change at any moment in the novel, leaving space for complete deception, as the reader has no alternative voices to listen to. We accompany Janina – as she does not like to be called – through endless cups of black tea, cosmic calculations and translations of Blake, going back and forth, every now and then doubting her mental sanity. We know of her ‘Ailments’, as she dubs her chronic illness, and of her hatred of given names. The first person narration, used throughout the text, lets the reader in on to the narrator’s thoughts, her witty remarks and astrological musings. Drive Your Plow guides the reader through horrific accidents, with language that is fluid and accessible yet tainted with an unusual manner of speaking, leaving us to wonder, for a short while, if this story is situated in the present, and then, whether the narrator is out of her mind.

Tokarczuk’s master storytelling paired with Antonia Lloyd-Jones’ excellent translation pause the happenings of the plot to delve into contemplation of mankind and the universe. The newly translated noir novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Man Booker International Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk is an entertaining one, yet it is not your typical mystery page-turner. Our narrator introduces us to an alarming situation in an almost mechanical tone.

Drive your plow over