While I can’t compare to the original Polish I think it’s fair to say Lloyd-Jones did a skilled job. The version I read was translated from Polish to English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. The translation of this novel also deserves great credit.

At the same time, she engages in educated debates and enjoys translating the works of William Blake with her friend and former student. Is she an eccentric hermit with some strange passions or is there something more behind her? She is also fascinated with astrology and mapping out the destinies of everyone around her (including the recently deceased). But Tokarczuk keeps the reader fascinated by toeing the line of not revealing just how insane Janina is. She’s smart and observant but also clearly insane. Janina is an interesting choice as narrator. Janina is convinced that the animals are taking vengeance on the hunters but her friends tell her her theory is crazy and the local police ignore her. Things get stranger and creepier when only a few weeks later, a second body is found. We see the strangeness of the people who are drawn to live in a place all year round and how their relationships work even as they are drawn inwards. (I particularly enjoyed this setting because I once hiked a nearby mountain from the Czech Republic across the border into Poland.) Janina, Oddball, and Bigfoot are the only inhabitants who remain in their region all winter, most other houses belonging to summer residents. The story is set in a remote area of Poland, on the border of the Czech Republic. Janina particularly dislikes him because he was a hunter and so it seems fitting that he has apparently choked on the bone of a deer that he killed. An all around unpleasant man, no one seems to mourn Bigfoot’s death. Bigfoot has died and they are the first on the scene. The story opens when her neighbour, Oddball, calls on her to visit the home of another neighbour, Bigfoot. Names are important to her though and she has a tendency to rename most people she comes in contact with, to names that she believes suit them better. Our narrator is Janina, but don’t call her that because she doesn’t like her name. It’s certainly not a comedy but it does have some moments that are quite funny. It’s not a thriller but it does leave you with an unsettling feeling all the way through. It’s not a mystery though there is a mystery at the centre of it. It’s hard to know how to classify a book like this. It is now available for sale in North America. I received an Advance Readers’ Copy of this book. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead – Olga Tokarczuk (Riverhead Books, 2019)

Drive your plough