Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
By Olga Tokarczuk, trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Publication Year: 2018
Type: Fiction
Genre: contemporary, magical realism
Read on 2020-05-24
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2020 Reading Survey ➞
★★★☆☆
DARK COTTAGECORE FEATURING CURMUDGEONLY ASTROLOGY-WITCH IN THE REMOTE FRIGID POLISH COUNTRYSIDE AND STRANGE ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR AND TOWN DEATHS
nuff said.
Ok but seriously though this was wicked good. Beautifully written. A dark feminist, animal rights, anti-ageism manifesto. Unreliable narrator. A lot of expert-level astrology and we love to see it. Many William Blake quotations. Translation is mostly stunning. I give the translator benefit of the doubt in the parts that get a little awkward that it was a choice to preserve original meaning over a smoother re-write in English. I personally found this a little slow in terms of pacing for my liking and current attention span, hence the lower rating. But do read this. It good.
