[Book Review] Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead, Olga Tokarczuk

I’m a big believer of a saying “the right book for the right time”, and Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead “came” to me when my father passed. I was heartbroken, and I found some solace reading this story. It’s tinged with death throughout, and it consoled me in a way a person couldn’t. Weird as it may sound, I felt comforted by the philosophical insights about death, life, injustice and those states in between, this book offers.

“Everything will pass. The wise Man knows this from the start, and has no regrets.”

The protagonist, Janina Duszejko, a quirky 60s years old woman living in a rural Poland, gives a stunningly distinguished voice to the story. She’s unreliable and “crazy” but that even made it all the more interesting. It invited readers to question a lot of things: preconceived belief about religion, how it feels being different and marginalized, who has the right to kill/live, belief in predestination.

The writing was impeccable, atmospheric, and at times hinted with sardonic tones. Not to mention a very convincing plot. A book I truly and thoroughly enjoyed.

“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we’re living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves… And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.”

5/5 ⭑