Excerpt from Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"We must shift him onto the couch," said Oddball.

I didn't like this idea. I didn't like having to touch him.

"I think we should wait for the Police," I said. But Oddball had already made space on the folding couch and was rolling up the sleeves of his sweater. He gave me a piercing look with those pale eyes of his.

"You wouldn't want to be found like that, would you? In such a state. It's inhuman."

Oh yes, the human body is most definitely inhuman. Especially a dead one.

Wasn't it a sinister paradox that now we had to deal with Big Foot's body, that he'd left us this final trouble? Us, his neighbors whom he'd never respected, never liked, and never cared about?

To my mind, Death should be followed by the annihilation of matter. That would be the best solution for the body. Like this, annihilated bodies would go straight back into the black holes whence they came. The Souls would travel at the speed of light into the light. If such a thing as the Soul exists.

Overcoming tremendous resistance, I did as Oddball asked. We took hold of the body by the legs and arms and shifted it onto the couch. To my surprise I found that it was heavy, not entirely inert, but stubbornly stiff instead, like starched bed linen that has just been through the mangle. I also saw his socks, or what was on his feet in their place-dirty rags, foot wrappings made from a sheet torn into strips, now gray and stained. I don't know why, but the sight of those wrappings hit me so hard in the chest, in the diaphragm, in my entire body, that I could no longer contain my sobbing. Oddball cast me a cold, fleeting glance, with distinct reproach.

Excerpted from Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. Copyright © 2019 by Olga Tokarczuk. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.