Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Originally published in Poland in 2009, Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead follows Janina, a strange recluse who resides in a remote Polish village near the Czech border. She’s a caretaker for summer homes left unoccupied in the dead of winter, and spends her days studying astrology and translating the poems of William Blake. When her neighbors start turning up dead, Janina stokes a theory that local wild animals are seeking out revenge and killing the very people who hunt them. This slow burn isn’t a typical murder mystery, but rather a philosophical folk tale turned thriller that examines the state of animal welfare—and the lengths one will go to be the voice for the voiceless. Tokarczuk, a recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, unveils a thrilling examination of the relationship between humans and nature. Drive Your Plow was released in the U.S. in 2019, with an English translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. The same year, it was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and named one of TIME’s top 10 books of the year. —Meg Zukin

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