Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

This is the first fiction book on my list this month and there is a good reason. The novel is a crime story but with a twist in that it is also a primer for vegetarian ethics. The novel raises questions about the morality of hunting and challenges our preconceived views on whose death has meaning, who deserves our grief and who deserves justice. 

Long considered a “women’s matter,” animal rights have historically been dismissed as something that only women cared about, therefore trivialized and dismissed. This book ties these issues together well, as the main character is dismissed as sentimental and crazy for her concern for animals. 

It is beautifully written and very gripping, a must read. 

Title: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Author: Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

ISBN: 978-1913097257

Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions

“It occurred to me that every unjustly inflicted death deserved public exposure. Even an Insect’s. A death that nobody noticed was twice as scandalous.”

Olga Tokarczuk is a Polish writer and activist known for feminist literature, She was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Antonia Lloyd-Jones is a British translator of Polish literature based in London. She is best known as the long-time translator of Olga Tokarczuk’s works in English, including Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2019. The former co-chair of the Translators Association in the United Kingdom from 2015 to 2017, she is also a mentor for the Emerging Translator Mentorship Program in the National Center for Writing and has mentored several early-career translators from Polish into English.

Abdourahamane Ly, guest curator for Veganuary at Global Literature in Libraries Initiative, has been vegan for the past seven years now. He is extremely passionate about animal rights and encouraging more humans, especially Africans, to go vegan. He was born in Guinea in West Africa but spent the last 13 years in China. He is currently in Rwanda spreading the vegan message. You can follow him on Instagram at @fulanivegan and X at @fulanivegan.