Two years ago a Polish friend at work went to a publishing event and brought me back a gift. It was a beautiful book called Flights by a Polish author named Olga Tokarczuk. (It really was a beautiful book, cobalt blue that appeared freshly inked, with fine white lettering, published by Fitzcarraldo Press.) The book was a real gem, a connected series of stories and meditations on travel, the body, and hope. The next year, my friend lent me a second book, House of Day, House of Night, which I also read and loved. Next thing, Olga Tokarczuk won the International Man Booker Prize for Flights.
This year I bought Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead which, in my view, is the best of her books I’ve read so far. (The wonderful title is from William Blake). The narrator, Janina Duszejko, gives us a whole new way of seeing the world, peppered with Medieval-style capitalised nouns, her own made-up names for people, a love of Blake, astrological ‘insight’, and a deep feeling for animals. The story centres around a series of gruesome murders on the remote Polish plateau where she lives, with only a few eccentric friends for company since she lost her beloved dogs. It’s far from a conventional detective story and focuses more on the narrator’s longing for a creative, numinous world free from suffering:
“Blake would say that there are some places in the Universe
where the Fall has not occurred, the world has not turned upside down and Eden
still exists. Here Mankind is not governed by the rules of reason, stupid and
strict, but by the heart and intuition. The people do not indulge in idle
chatter, parading what they know, but create remarkable things by applying
their imagination. The state ceases to impose the shackles of daily oppression,
but helps people to realize their hopes and dreams. And Man is not just a cog
in the system, not just playing a role, but a free Creature.”
So, all I want to say is this: go read Olga Tokarczuk. You won’t regret it.
The post Olga Tokarczuk: Go read appeared first on Steve Griffin.