Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead takes place in a remote Polish village, where Janina, 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. Janina 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 Maladroit, 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.

By:   Olga Tokarczuk
Imprint:   Text Publishing Company
Country of Publication:   Australia
Dimensions:   Height: 232mm,  Width: 155mm,  Spine: 20mm
Weight:   342g
ISBN:   9781925773088
ISBN 10:   1925773086
Pages:   304
Publication Date:   October 2018
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Olga Tokarczuk is one of Poland's best and most beloved authors. In 2015 she received the German-Polish International Bridge Prize, as well as Poland's highest literary honour, the Nike and the Nike Readers' Prize. She also received a Nike in 2009 for her novel Flights, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2018.

`A barbed, shrewd parodic eco-noir.' * TLS UK * `Provocative and darkly comic fiction.' * Evening Standard , Best Books of 2018 * 'It's a crime story. It's also a study in isolation and mental illness. And a masterclass in literary eccentricity...There's nothing else quite like it.' * Warren Ellis * `Skilfully translated by prize winning Antonia Lloyd-Jones, the book illustrates the manipulative, political power of word and phrasing.' * Stuff.co.nz * `...darkly funny, politically charged, fiercely feminist, and occasionally just a little bit weird, and it's a wonderful salute to both Lloyd-Jones' sensitive translation and Tokarczuk's outspoken beliefs.' * AU Review * `[Flights is] a guide to living. Every word, observation, reflection and story embraces the importance of staying mobile in thought as much as in being...This is as brilliant and life-affirming as literature gets.' * Saturday Paper, on Flights * `Drive Your Plow casts a mythical spell over a chilly psychological thriller. It is so tantalisingly written, its developments so precisely but invisibly measured out, that I found myself far more likely to forget about the reviewing than the reading...a really good book can change the way we see things...Drive Your Plow unequivocally excels at this.' * Review 31 * `Not your typical crime fiction...especially as each chapter carries an epigraph from William Blake.' * Times * `Sardonic humour and gothic plot-twists add a layer of macabre rustic comedy. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, an outstanding Polish-English translator, sculpts Janina's English voice (complete with Blakean capitalisations) with panache.' * Economist * `An astonishing amalgam of thriller, comedy and political treatise, written by a woman who combines an extraordinary intellect with an anarchic sensibility.' * Guardian * `Tokarczuk's style, combining wit, uncanny metaphor, biological truth and metaphysical profundity, is unique. Her books reveal just how good literature can be.' * Saturday Paper * `Entering Mrs. Duszejko's rich, eccentric world is like waking up in Oz, or falling into Wonderland. Everything, from the unreliable mobile phone signal to the patterns of the wind, is attributed character and motivation, so that the whole universe shimmers with intent, agency and hidden meaning.' * Big Issue * `Translated with virtuosic precision and wit by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Tokarczuk's prescient, provocative and furiously comic fiction seethes with a Blakean conviction of the cleansing power of rage: the vengeance of the weak when justice is denied.' * New Statesman * `Antonia Lloyd-Jones...has once again done a remarkable job of capturing the uncanny distinction of Tokarczuk's prose in English. There is much to admire in this book and even more to learn.' * Irish Times * `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 moral thriller that will keep you guessing until its very last page.' * Culture.pl * `A strongly voiced existential thriller.' * Guardian * `A magnificent writer.' * Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize in Literature laureate 2015 *

• Long-listed for European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Literature Prize 2019
• Long-listed for Man Booker International Prize 2019 (UK)
• Short-listed for European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Literature Prize 2019
• Short-listed for Man Booker International Prize 2019 (UK)