A mesmerizing novel by Olga Tokarczuk, a young writer who has already won the Nobel Prize for Literature in a remote Polish village, on the Polish-Czech border, lives in a lone woman named Yanina. She is a rather strange type who stays away from the company of humans and prefers the company of animals. She worked as a school teacher until she was fired, and now earns a living by guarding the houses of residents who fled the village during the winter season. She spends her free time editing astrological maps and translating William Blake's poems. Then, one evening, the body of her neighbor is discovered in his home, having apparently been strangled by an animal bone. This opens a chain of strange deaths of some of the residents of the isolated village. The findings arouse Yanina's suspicion that these are murders, and she decides to investigate the matter in unconventional ways (including making astrological maps for the dead), and this to help the police who are procrastinating in solving the case. "On the Bones of the Dead" is a fascinating literary thriller by Olga Tokarchuk, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and winner of the Man Booker International Prize. Under the guise of a detective mystery and mesmerizing writing reserved for few writers, Tokarchuk explores the soul of a lonely woman who is full of love for animals and nature, but detests social frameworks and orders. Through Yanina's story, Tokarchuk sharply criticizes the religious establishment and the lust for hunting, and raises existential questions about loneliness, madness and the fate of all creatures, in our violent and self-righteous world.
