A review by meggymoocow
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was a very interesting read. I was intrigued by this book because of the claim that it had started a political upheaval in Poland, but having read it, I’m not sure I see how or why. The moral message of the book is mainly about animal rights and it takes a strong anti-hunting stance, but this didn’t feel like a new message to me. I imagine this was a contextual mismatch between British and Polish readers. What I found more interesting was the exploration of mental illness and age, as the main character struggles to be taken seriously due to being stereotyped as a mad old woman.
My favourite thing about this book was the beautiful and adept translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. I don’t usually enjoy reading in translation, but here it was a joy. The careful word choice made me consider the linguistics of Polish and made me curious to read more Polish literature. It must have been a real juggling act to get right, which stood out in the chapters where the characters were themselves attempting to translate Blake into Polish, so we were reading an English translation of a Polish translation of English poetry.