Halloween with “Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead”
You will LOVE Polish horror
When I think (belated) Halloween 🎃 , I think this masterpiece by Olga Tokarczuk (Polish Nobel laureate):
This is a perfect spooky/mysterious/crime investigation book for cosy fall nights 🍁
The book follows the main character, an older quirky woman Janina living in a countryside house in Poland.
Mysterious deaths start to unfold in her little village, and one of the hypothesis of why this happens is that the animals are taking revenge for all the hunting and poaching. The book reads like a fable that explores Dostoevsky style questions (who can judge on who deserves to live?).
It also explores the questions of humans’ interaction with nature, and much more.
Sadly I couldn’t read this book in the original, but the translation to English was amazing. Even through translation you can enjoy Tokarczuk’s unique narrative.
I saw mixed reviews on this book (maybe this is one of those either love or hate books), but I really really enjoyed it.
“You know, 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 so hard to understand each other”.
I am learning Polish on Duolingo for a few months now, and hope that one day, I will be able to read Olga Tokarczuk’s books in original.
Beer of the day got to be a Polish beer specialty I enjoyed in Krakow area: it is piwo grzane / hot beer!
Think Glühwein, but beer (crazy, I know!). It is a beer served hot, with spices (cinnamon, honey, ginger).
