By: Labeena Hanif
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk is told through the eyes of the Narrator, an eccentric older lady who lives by the stars, and the poetry of William Blake (from which the title is taken). Believing she is the only one who knows the culprit, she takes it upon herself to investigate the recent string of deaths in her isolated Polish village.
The joy of this novel lies in its dark, compelling narrative, and equally in the privilege of inhabiting the Narrator’s perceptive mind. It feels like a conversation; fans of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian might find in it a complement and an inverse. Gorgeously insightful, strange, and magical, the world that Tokarczuk creates is all too easy to get lost in. It drives us to ask ourselves: who do we believe is innocent? Who do we believe deserves to live?
