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

Now we turned off the partly cleared road that runs across our hamlet and splits into paths leading to each of the houses. A path trodden in deep snow led to Big Foot's house, so narrow that you had to set one foot behind the other while trying to keep your balance.

"It won't be a pretty sight," warned Oddball, turning to face me, and briefly blinding me with his headlamp.

I wasn't expecting anything else. For a while he was silent, and then, as if to explain himself, he said: "I was alarmed by the light in his kitchen and the dog barking so plaintively. Didn't you hear it?"

No, I didn't. I was asleep, numbed by hops and valerian.

"Where is she now, the Dog?"

"I took her away from here-she's at my place, I fed her and she seemed to calm down."

Another moment of silence.

"He always put out the light and went to bed early to save money, but this time it continued to burn. A bright streak against the snow. Visible from my bedroom window. So I went over there, thinking he might have got drunk or was doing the dog harm, for it to be howling like that."

We passed a tumbledown barn and moments later Oddball's flashlight fetched out of the darkness two pairs of shining eyes, pale green and fluorescent.

"Look, Deer," I said in a raised whisper, grabbing him by the coat sleeve. "They've come so close to the house. Aren't they afraid?"

The Deer were standing in the snow almost up to their bellies. They gazed at us calmly, as if we had caught them in the middle of performing a ritual whose meaning we couldn't fathom. It was dark, so I couldn't tell if they were the same Young Ladies who had come here from the Czech Republic in the autumn, or some new ones. And in fact why only two? That time there had been at least four of them.

"Go home," I said to the Deer, and started waving my arms. They twitched, but didn't move. They calmly stared after us, all the way to the front door. A shiver ran through me.

Meanwhile Oddball was stamping his feet to shake the snow off his boots outside the neglected cottage. The small windows were sealed with plastic and cardboard, and the wooden door was covered with black tar paper.

The walls in the hall were stacked with firewood for the stove, logs of uneven size. The interior was nasty, dirty and neglected. Throughout there was a smell of damp, of wood and earth-moist and voracious. The stink of smoke, years old, had settled on the walls in a greasy layer.

The door into the kitchen was ajar, and at once I saw Big Foot's body lying on the floor. Almost as soon as my gaze landed on him, it leaped away. It was a while before I could look over there again. It was a dreadful sight.

He was lying twisted in a bizarre position, with his hands to his neck, as if struggling to pull off a collar that was pinching him. Gradually I went closer, as if hypnotized. I saw his open eyes fixed on a point somewhere under the table. His dirty vest was ripped at the throat. It looked as if the body had turned on itself, lost the fight and been killed. It made me feel cold with Horror-the blood froze in my veins and I felt as if it had withdrawn deep inside my body. Only yesterday I had seen this body alive.

"My God," I mumbled, "what happened?"

Oddball shrugged.

"I can't get through to the Police, it's the Czech network again."

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and tapped out the number I knew from the television-997-and soon after an automated Czech voice responded. That's what happens here. The signal wanders, with no regard for the national borders. Sometimes the dividing line between operators parks itself in my kitchen for hours on end, and occasionally it has stopped by Oddball's house or on the terrace for several days. Its capricious nature is hard to predict.

"You should have gone higher up the hill behind the house," I belatedly advised him.

"He'll be stiff as a board before they get here," said Oddball in a tone that I particularly disliked in him-as if he had all the answers. He took off his sheepskin coat and hung it on the back of a chair. "We can't leave him like that, he looks ghastly. He was our neighbor, after all."

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.