November’s Inkspot Book Club pick is Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions and beautifully translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. I have a particular weakness for Fitzcarraldo’s books: whenever I see those distinctive blue and white covers, I know I’ll pick up something that fizzes with intelligence and style. This particular novel is signature Fitzcarraldo: original, wide-ranging, funny, with a unique setting and in many ways is, like its protagonist, is deeply yet sanely bonkers.
On the surface, it’s a crime novel, but it goes much deeper than that. It’s an existential slow-burning noir which gets its hooks into the reader early, thanks to its narrator, the eccentric Mrs. Janina Duszejko (pronounced doo-shake-oh) who lives self-sufficient and alone in a remote Polish valley. Following the disappearance of her two dogs, termed her ‘little girls’, she is sustained by her love of animals, of William Blake’s poetry, one or two strange friendships, an obsession with astrology and horoscopes and her unshakeable belief in herself. She has private nicknames for all her neighbours, many of whom are summer visitors only, and pay her a bit of pocket money to look after their houses in their absence, as the empty properties are constantly vulnerable to wild animals, insects, birds, bats, dodgy plumbing and the brutal Polish winters. One freezing night, she is woken by ‘Oddball’, to tell her that ‘Bigfoot’ has been murdered. ‘Bigfoot’ is a particular bête noir of Mrs. Duszejko’s, as he is cruel to animals and horribly mistreats his gentle-natured dog.
So begins the tale; Bigfoot’s is the first in a series of murders, inspiring Mrs D to investigate, and which gives her the idea of adding a death day to the personalised horoscopes which she draws up in minute detail for friend and foe alike. She has long fallen foul of the local police, who regard her as a nuisance and are utterly uninterested in her complaints about the local hunters, and about Bigfoot in particular: his poaching, his use of cruel and illegal traps and his awful abuse of his poor dog. I won’t say any more about the story, which unfolds with a gentle but decisive humour, for fear of spoilers.
The author seamlessly blends philosophical and moral questions without sacrificing narrative pace: the story zips along while considering questions such as human dominance over animals, our relationship with nature, questions of justice, morality, empathy and revenge. There’s a mythic quality to Mrs D: as an older woman, she is overlooked, invisible, easily dismissed by the police and by others as an interfering busybody, but this gives her a kind of superpower as she is so underestimated. Her inner world is full of richness and humour, of depth and layers, and in showing her interactions with the people and creatures around her, Tocarczuk builds a subtle portrait of an unusually single-minded individual and also of the very eccentric community around her. Mrs D’s observations and her obsession with astrology lead to several absorbing ruminations about human nature, our relationship to the natural world and our infinitesimally tiny place in the grand cosmic scheme, the shocking brevity of our time on this planet, each of us no more than a nanoblink in the long night of the universe. Mrs D is an intelligent, articulate narrator, sharp-eyed and satirical, with wonderful descriptive powers, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute I spent in her slightly crazy company.
Olga Tokarczuk won the Nobel prize for literature in 2018 and has won numerous other awards and prizes such as the Nike award and the Man Booker International Prize. Her books include Primeval and Other Times, The Empusium, Flights, and the epic The Books of Jacob. https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/authors/olga-tokarczuk/
Tokarczuk studied clinical psychology at Warsaw University, and worked as a psychotherapist for a number of years, after volunteering in an asylum for adolescents. She has spent time working or studying in London, the US and Berlin. She has been accused of being unpatriotic for her outspoken criticism of antisemitism in Poland. She’s an activist and supporter of cultural activities, and has been a co-host of the Literary Heights Festival and founded the Olga Tokarczuk Foundation in 2020, which promotes Polish and world culture and art in Poland and abroad. The foundation also promotes human rights, democracy, civil society, civil liberties, and is proudly anti-discrimination and pro-women’s rights. The foundation values free speech and free exchange of ideas, and fights for equality and non-discrimination in every domain. In 2022, they organised the first World Congress of Translators, recognising that without translators, so many important writers, such as Tokarczuk, would never reach an audience outside their home country. Her work has been translated into over 40 languages.
Rather wonderfully, the foundation also describes itself as being ‘devoted to issues of ecology, in particular relating to environmental protection and animal rights … encouraging people to abandon the comfortable ignorance regarding the exploitation of animals and nature.’ All I can say to this is that Mrs D would be super proud.