October is a month of literary prizes … and I was thrilled to learn that Olga Tokarczuk (the 2018 Booker winner) was awarded the Nobel this year (along with Peter Handke) for her novel, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.
I’m also grateful that Antonia Lloyd-Jones’ deft English translation has made Tokarczuk’s astounding novel available to a wider audience. I look forward to reading more work from this psychologically astute and lyrical writer.
… here’s how Tokarczuk’s prize-winning novel begins:
I. Now Pay Attention
Once meek, and in a perilous path, The just man kept his course along The vale of death.
I am already at an age and additionally in a state where I must always wash my feet thoroughly before bed, in the event of having to be removed by an ambulance in the Night.
Had I examined he Ephemerides that evening to see what was happening in the sky, I wouldn’t have gone to bed at all. Meanwhile I had fallen very fast asleep; I had helped myself with an infusion of hops, and I also took two valerian pills. So when I was woken in the middle of the Night by hammering on the door — violent, immoderate and thus ill-omened — I was unable to come round.
— From Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
