Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: A Novel by Olga Tokarczuk (English)

Description: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones Finalist for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize. A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, and autonomy and fate. FORMAT Hardcover LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century "A brilliant literary murder mystery." —Chicago Tribune "Extraordinary. Tokarczuks novel is funny, vivid, dangerous, and disturbing, and it raises some fierce questions about human behavior. My sincere admiration for her brilliant work." —Annie ProulxIn a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice? Author Biography Olga Tokarczuk has won the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Man Book International Prize, among many other honors. She is the author of a dozen works of fiction, two collections of essays, and a childrens book; her work has been translated into fifty languages. Review Named a best book of 2019 by TIME, NPR, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and BookRiot.PEN America Translation Prize longlistWarwick Prize for Women in Translation shortlist"A marvelously weird and fablelike mystery. . . . Authors with Tokarczuks vending machine of phrasing . . . and gimlet eye for human behavior. . . are rarely also masters of pacing and suspense. But even as Tokarczuk sticks landing after landing . . . her asides are never desultory or a liability. They are more like little cuts — quick, exacting and purposefully belated in their bleeding. . . . This book is not a mere whodunit: Its a philosophical fairy tale about life and death thats been trying to spill its secrets. Secrets that, if youve kept your ear to the ground, you knew in your bones all along." — New York Times Book Review"While it adopts the straightforward structure of a murder mystery, [the book features] macabre humor and morbid philosophical interludes [that] are distinctive to its author. . . [and an] excellent payoff at the finale. . . . As for Ms. Tokarczuk, theres no doubt: Shes a gifted, original writer, and the appearance of her novels in English is a welcome development." — The Wall Street Journal "Drive Your Plow is exhilarating in a way that feels fierce and private, almost inarticulable; its one of the most existentially refreshing novels Ive read in a long time." — The New Yorker "A paean to nature. . . a sort of ode to Blake. . . [and] a lament. . . Does Tokarczuk transcend Blake? Arguable —perhaps." — NPR "A brilliant literary murder mystery." –Chicago Tribune " A winding, imaginative, genre-defying story. Part murder mystery, part fairy tale, Drive Your Plow is a thrilling philosophical examination of the ways in which some living creatures are privileged above others." – TIME "Shimmering with subversive brilliance . . . . this is not your conventional crime story—for Tokarczuk is not your conventional writer. Through her extraordinary talent and intellect, and her thinking novels, she ponders and tackles larger ecological and political issues. The stakes are always high; Tokarczuk repeatedly rises to the occasion and raises a call to arms."—HuffPost "Sometimes the opening sentence of a first-person narrative can so vividly capture the personality of its speaker that you immediately want to spend all the time you can in their company. Thats the case with . . . Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead . . . [a] barbed and subversive tale about what it takes to challenge the complacency of the powers that be." —Boston Globe "Bewitching. . .. Serious crosscurrents … explore everything from animal rights to predetermination to the way society stigmatizes and marginalizes those it considers mad, strange or simply different . . . Tokarczuk is capable of miracles and ensures that this extraordinary novel soars." —Minneapolis Star Tribune "Sardonic humour and gothic plot-twists add a layer of macabre rustic comedy." – The Economist "One of the funniest books of the year." – The Guardian "Written with humor, charm, and a great talent for mystery … a sharp, memorable alternative to those dime-a-dozen beach bag potboilers without losing any of the whodunnit appeal." —Town & Country Review Quote Warwick Prize for Women in Translation shortlist, 2019 "A marvelously weird and fablelike mystery. . . . Authors with Tokarczuks vending machine of phrasing . . . and gimlet eye for human behavior. . . are rarely also masters of pacing and suspense. But even as Tokarczuk sticks landing after landing . . . her asides are never desultory or a liability. They are more like little cuts -- quick, exacting and purposefully belated in their bleeding. . . . This book is not a mere whodunit: Its a philosophical fairy tale about life and death thats been trying to spill its secrets. Secrets that, if youve kept your ear to the ground, you knew in your bones all along." -- New York Times Book Review "While it adopts the straightforward structure of a murder mystery, [the book features] macabre humor and morbid philosophical interludes [that] are distinctive to its author. . . [and an] excellent payoff at the finale. . . . As for Ms. Tokarczuk, theres no doubt: Shes a gifted, original writer, and the appearance of her novels in English is a welcome development." -- The Wall Street Journal "Drive Your Plow is exhilarating in a way that feels fierce and private, almost inarticulable; its one of the most existentially refreshing novels Ive read in a long time." -- The New Yorker " A paean to nature. . . a sort of ode to Blake. . . [and] a lament. . . Does Tokarczuk transcend Blake? Arguable --perhaps." -- NPR "A brilliant literary murder mystery." - Chicago Tribune " A winding, imaginative, genre-defying story. Part murder mystery, part fairy tale, Drive Your Plow is a thrilling philosophical examination of the ways in which some living creatures are privileged above others." - TIME "Shimmering with subversive brilliance . . . . this is not your conventional crime story--for Tokarczuk is not your conventional writer. Through her extraordinary talent and intellect, and her thinking novels, she ponders and tackles larger ecological and political issues. The stakes are always high; Tokarczuk repeatedly rises to the occasion and raises a call to arms."-- HuffPost "Sometimes the opening sentence of a first-person narrative can so vividly capture the personality of its speaker that you immediately want to spend all the time you can in their company. Thats the case with . . . Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead . . . [a] barbed and subversive tale about what it takes to challenge the complacency of the powers that be." -- Boston Globe "Bewitching. . .. Serious crosscurrents ... explore everything from animal rights to predetermination to the way society stigmatizes and marginalizes those it considers mad, strange or simply different . . . Tokarczuk is capable of miracles and ensures that this extraordinary novel soars." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune "Sardonic humour and gothic plot-twists add a layer of macabre rustic comedy." - The Economist "One of the funniest books of the year." - The Guardian "Written with humor, charm, and a great talent for mystery ... a sharp, memorable alternative to those dime-a-dozen beach bag potboilers without losing any of the whodunnit appeal." -- Town & Country Excerpt from Book I. Now Pay Attention Once meek, and in a perilous path, The just man kept his course along The vale of death. I am already at an age and additionally in a state where I must always wash my feet thoroughly before bed, in the event of having to be removed by an ambulance in the Night. Had I examined the Ephemerides that evening to see what was happening in the sky, I wouldnt have gone to bed at all. Meanwhile I had fallen very fast asleep; I had helped myself with an infusion of hops, and I also took two valerian pills. So when I was woken in the middle of the Night by hammering on the door-violent, immoderate and thus ill-omened-I was unable to come round. I sprang up and stood by the bed, unsteadily, because my sleepy, shaky body couldnt make the leap from the innocence of sleep into wakefulness. I felt weak and began to reel, as if about to lose consciousness. Unfortunately this has been happening to me lately, and has to do with my Ailments. I had to sit down and tell myself several times: Im at home, its Night, someones banging on the door; only then did I manage to control my nerves. As I searched for my slippers in the dark, I could hear that whoever had been banging was now walking around the house, muttering. Downstairs, in the cubbyhole for the electrical meters, I keep the pepper spray Dizzy gave me because of the poachers, and that was what now came to mind. In the darkness I managed to seek out the familiar, cold aerosol shape, and thus armed, I switched on the outside light, then looked at the porch through a small side window. There was a crunch of snow, and into my field of vision came my neighbor, whom I call Oddball. He was wrapping himself in the tails of the old sheepskin coat Id sometimes seen him wearing as he worked outside the house. Below the coat I could see his striped pajamas and heavy hiking boots. "Open up," he said. With undisguised astonishment he cast a glance at my linen suit (I sleep in something the Professor and his wife wanted to throw away last summer, which reminds me of a fashion from the past and the days of my youth-thus I combine the Practical and the Sentimental) and without a by-your-leave he came inside. "Please get dressed. Big Foot is dead." For a while I was speechless with shock; without a word I put on my tall snow boots and the first fleece to hand from the coat rack. Outside, in the pool of light falling from the porch lamp, the snow was changing into a slow, sleepy shower. Oddball stood next to me in silence, tall, thin and bony like a figure sketched in a few pencil strokes. Every time he moved, snow fell from him like icing sugar from pastry ribbons. "What do you mean, dead?" I finally asked, my throat tightening, as I opened the door, but Oddball didnt answer. He generally doesnt say much. He must have Mercury in a reticent sign, I reckon its in Capricorn or on the cusp, in square or maybe in opposition to Saturn. It could also be Mercury in retrograde-that produces reserve. We left the house and were instantly engulfed by the familiar cold, wet air that reminds us every winter that the world was not created for Mankind, and for at least half the year it shows us how very hostile it is to us. The frost brutally assailed our cheeks, and clouds of white steam came streaming from our mouths. The porch light went out automatically and we walked across the crunching snow in total darkness, except for Oddballs headlamp, which pierced the pitch dark in one shifting spot, just in front of him, as I tripped along in the Murk behind him. "Dont you have a flashlight?" he asked. Of course I had one, but I wouldnt be able to tell where it was until morning. Its a feature of flashlights that theyre only visible in the daytime. Big Foots cottage stood slightly out of the way, higher up than the other houses. It was one of three inhabited all year round. Only he, Oddball and I lived here without fear of the winter; all the other inhabitants had sealed their houses shut in October, drained the water from the pipes and gone back to the city. Now we turned off the partly cleared road that runs across our hamlet and splits into paths leading to each of the houses. A path trodden in deep snow led to Big Foots house, so narrow that you had to set one foot behind the other while trying to keep your balance. "It wont be a pretty sight," warned Oddball, turning to face me, and briefly blinding me with his headlamp. I wasnt expecting anything else. For a while he was silent, and then, as if to explain himself, he said: "I was alarmed by the light in his kitchen and the dog barking so plaintively. Didnt you hear it?" No, I didnt. I was asleep, numbed by hops and valerian. "Where is she now, the Dog?" "I took her away from here-shes at my place, I fed her and she seemed to calm down." Another moment of silence. "He always put out the light and went to bed early to save money, but this time it continued to burn. A bright streak against the snow. Visible from my bedroom window. So I went over there, thinking he might have got drunk or was doing the dog harm, for it to be howling like that." We passed a tumbledown barn and moments later Oddballs flashlight fetched out of the darkness two pairs of shining eyes, pale green and fluorescent. "Look, Deer," I said in a raised whisper, grabbing him by the coat sleeve. "Theyve come so close to the house. Arent they afraid?" The Deer were standing in the snow almost up to their bellies. They gazed at us calmly, as if we had caught them in the middle of performing a ritual whose meaning we couldnt fathom. It was dark, so I couldnt tell if they were the same Young Ladies who had come here from the Czech Republic in the autumn, or some new ones. And in fact why only two? That time there had been at least four of them. "Go home," I said to the Deer, and started waving my arms. They twitched, but didnt move. They calmly stared after us, all the way to the front door. A shiver ran through me. Meanwhile Oddball was stamping his feet to shake the snow off his boots outside the neglected cottage. The small windows were sealed with plastic and cardboard, and the wooden door was covered with black tar paper. The walls in the hall were stacked with firewood for the stove, logs of uneven size. The interior was nasty, dirty and neglected. Throughout there was a smell of damp, of wood and earth-moist and voracious. The stink of smoke, years old, had settled on the walls in a greasy layer. The door into the kitchen was ajar, and at once I saw Big Foots body lying on the floor. Almost as soon as my gaze landed on him, it leaped away. It was a while before I could look over there again. It was a dreadful sight. He was lying twisted in a bizarre position, with his hands to his neck, as if struggling to pull off a collar that was pinching him. Gradually I went closer, as if hypnotized. I saw his open eyes fixed on a point somewhere under the table. His dirty vest was ripped at the throat. It looked as if the body had turned on itself, lost the fight and been killed. It made me feel cold with Horror-the blood froze in my veins and I felt as if it had withdrawn deep inside my body. Only yesterday I had seen this body alive. "My God," I mumbled, "what happened?" Oddball shrugged. "I cant get through to the Police, its the Czech network again." I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and tapped out the number I knew from the television-997-and soon after an automated Czech voice responded. Thats what happens here. The signal wanders, with no regard for the national borders. Sometimes the dividing line between operators parks itself in my kitchen for hours on end, and occasionally it has stopped by Oddballs house or on the terrace for several days. Its capricious nature is hard to predict. "You should have gone higher up the hill behind the house," I belatedly advised him. "Hell be stiff as a board before they get here," said Oddball in a tone that I particularly disliked in him-as if he had all the answers. He took off his sheepskin coat and hung it on the back of a chair. "We cant leave him like that, he looks ghastly. He was our neighbor, after all." As I looked at Big Foots poor, twisted body I found it hard to believe that only yesterday Id been afraid of this Person. I disliked him. To say I disliked him might be putting it too mildly. Instead I should say that I found him repulsive, horrible. In fact I didnt even regard him as a human Being. Now he was lying on the stained floor in his dirty underwear, small and skinny, limp and harmless. Just a piece of matter, which some unimaginable processes had reduced to a fragile object, separated from everything else. It made me feel sad, horrified, for even someone as foul as he was did not deserve death. Who on earth does? The same fate awaits me too, and Oddball, and the Deer outside; one day we shall all be nothing more than corpses. I glanced at Oddball, in the hope of some consolation, but he was already busy making the rumpled bed, a shakedown on a dilapidated folding couch, so I did my best to comfort myself. And then it occurred to me that in a way Big Foots death might be a good thing. It had freed him from the mess that was his life. And it had freed other living Creatures from him. Oh yes, suddenly I realized what a good thing death can be, how just and fair, like a disinfectant, or a vacuum cleaner. I admit thats what I thought, and thats what I still think now. Big Foot was my neighbor, our houses were only half a kilometer apart, yet I rarely had a Description for Library Tokarczuk, who turned heads with Flights, her genre--bending Man Booker International Prize winner, can be trusted to do something original with the crime novel. In an isolated Polish village, Janina spends the dark winter months ignoring people (she prefers animals) while studying astrology, translating William Blake, and tending to the summer homes of the wealthy. Then a neighbor is found dead. Details ISBN0525541330 Author Antonia Lloyd-Jones Pages 288 Language English Year 2019 ISBN-10 0525541330 ISBN-13 9780525541332 Format Hardcover Short Title Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead Subtitle A Novel Country of Publication United States Translated from Polish AU Release Date 2019-08-13 NZ Release Date 2019-08-13 US Release Date 2019-08-13 UK Release Date 1900-01-01 Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc Translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones Publication Date 2019-08-13 Imprint Riverhead Books,U.S. DEWEY 891.8537 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:160034277;

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