Name a prestigious literary award, and Olga Tokarczuk has won it: the Nobel Prize and the International Booker (both in 2018); Slovenia’s Vilencia Prize (2013); the Internationaler Brückepreis (2015), for contributing to better understanding among nations; the Jan Michalski Prize, awarded from Switzerland in 2015; the Prix Laure Bataillon (2019), for literature translated into French; and Poland’s own highest literary award, the Nike, in 2008 and 2015.
Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead combines a quirky purported madwoman/astrologer, an insular village on a plateau in southwestern Poland, five gruesome deaths (four by murder), and a riotously funny first-person protagonist in a hilarious, sometimes gloomy, treat. I left out sublime and mood-altering descriptions of nature—the forest, the harsh winter, the wildlife, (including beetle larvae)—and apt observations of modern trends and class differentiation. All of it serves the author’s purpose, which is obviously to amuse her readers, while shining an unblinking light on hypocritical modern practices in all their rough-hewn cruelty. It’s quite the variegated pleasure, a multi-layered romp.
The novel’s title is a slightly paraphrased quote from William Blake; our heroine recites it to herself as she watches winter take over her village on All Saints’ Day. She thus observes the inexorable change of seasons; winter seems to last the longest, while spring and summer go by in a flash. She gives everyone pet names, which sometimes become the actual names people go by: Big Foot, Dizzy, Oddball, and Miss Good News, among others. These add to the quirkiness of the character and of the novel; it’s just one more layer of delight on offer.
Be all that as it may, a magisterial justice meted out by nature holds this energetic, told-by-a-dubious-protagonist tale together. And it gives it its lance-like point. I’m all over the lot here, I know, because this book gave me so much pleasure. But the novel is tightly organized, while seeming random; it is wise while seeming silly. The heroine’s internal dialogue is always truly hers: it relies on a shaky foundation of superstition, folklore, and tendentious evidence, but never loses its way toward justice.
Take up this slim volume by one of this moment’s true luminaries. And then move on to the genre-bending Flights, and the comprehensive Books of Jacob. I am somewhat ashamed to say that’s the limit of my exposure to this superb artist. All three are more than worth your while; I’m sure she’ll never produce anything that isn’t.
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