Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

A Novel

By: Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Narrated by: Beata Pozniak

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

"A brilliant literary murder mystery." (Chicago Tribune)

"Extraordinary. Tokarczuk's novel is funny, vivid, dangerous, and disturbing, and it raises some fierce questions about human behavior. My sincere admiration for her brilliant work." (Annie Proulx)

In 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?

©2019 Olga Tokarczuk and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

Named a best book of 2019 by Time, NPR, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and BookRiot.

PEN America Translation Prize longlist

Warwick Prize for Women in Translation shortlist

“A marvelously weird and fablelike mystery.... Authors with Tokarczuk’s 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: It’s a philosophical fairy tale about life and death that’s been trying to spill its secrets. Secrets that, if you’ve 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, there’s no doubt: She’s 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; it’s one of the most existentially refreshing novels I’ve read in a long time.” (The New Yorker)

Narrator - Authentic as it can get!

I read this book (and other Olga Tokarczuk's work) many years ago in Polish, in it's original language. The performance of the narrator is so authentic and as good as it can get. She voiced all the characters so perfectly that it took me back to the old country and all the people from those small villages that actually do sound like that. The exchange between Duszejko and the President's wife is powerful. The dentist's voice and how he's a little tipsy is so believable. The scenes at the police station sound so spooky and real. Beata Pozniak's voice can honestly capture the tone of those meetings and all the settings described brilliantly by Tokarczuk. The relationship with Oddball and Dizzy are performed beautifully. Wonderful to hear how Duszejko's dreams and passion for astrology are shared with others. Also, great to hear a narrator that actually pronounces all the polish words correctly. Olga Tokarczuk has an extarordinary talent to describe characters and places. Janina Duszejko is one of the best written female characters in literature. Fantastic story. Nice to go back to a book from years ago, but this time - to listen to it! Perfect and so authentic!

Loved the narration

Unlike other people, I actually loved loved listening to Beata Pozniak, whose first language isn’t English. I enjoyed it so much, I will listen to it again in a month.

Meh

I normally like to read stories from other countries/cultures. This one didn't do much for me. I don't pay much attention to astrology and the focus horoscopes did not grab my attention. I love animals and am a vegetarian but the protagonist's viewpoints were somewhat unrealistic.

Though the narrator had an accent, she enunciated very clearly and spoke precisely--to the point that the pace was excruciatingly slow.

Read painstakingly slowly

I didn't think it was humanly possible to read a slowly as the narrator. Need to set it to about 1.7 time. It really was very distracting.

A deep dive into another person's head

What is crime? What is faith? What is family?

Tokarczuk challenges all your modern preconceptions in this murder mystery, written from the perspective of an aging astrologist in rural Poland.

The writing captures a unique human perspective, and the narration sells it in a sympathetic cadence. A work deserving of it's award.

enchanting

what an unusual story! The narrator brought it to life. well done! will read more from this author...

Wow!

Best book I've listened to since The Life of Pi. Great story, great narration, great characters, satisfying conclusion.

Not Bad, but Didn't Live Up to Expectations

"Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead" never quite lived up to my admittedly relatively high expectations for it. While I like the oddball humor of the story, and found it's main character intriguing, I didn't buy the essentials of the plot. Somehow, I felt that an essential piece in establishing the credibility of the story was missing. I'm sure some will say the "story; is besides the poin t--I get that -- but for me it was a distraction, one that grew as the story progressed. As for Agatha Pozniak's performance of the story, I think she well captured the strange essence of the old lady narrating the take. I was quite surprised when I heard her interviewed (in English) and found how different her actual speaking voice was from the one that she provided for the main character.

interesting clever immersive but

it was not the marvellous work that i read it was. but it had a clever line of plot, and gave yhis nice feeling of melancholic loneliness that i like. some say it's a murder mystery in literal way, some say it's a call to sabe the planet. i say a bit of this and that, but mostly a nice arrangement of ideas and usage of word to say.....

Terrific!

I loved everything about this. What a writer! Looking forward to reading more of her work. The narrator is a character worth knowing and the reading, while slow, is very good. I listened to it at 1.1 which I found was still a leisurely pace and caused no distortion.