Tokarczuk’s novel has a strain running through it which feels completely of-the-moment. The revenge of nature. In a quiet corner of Poland, near the Czech border, a small community is afflicted by a series of murders. The narrator, Janina, a woman who wears her eccentricity firmly on her sleeve, claims that the victims, all of them male hunters, have been killed by deer, who are seeking vengeance for the killing of the hunters. Janina is a wonderfully idiosyncratic soul, who could be a visionary or could be a nutcase. Her justified anger at the whole process of hunting, something she sees as murder, is complemented by a fervent belief in astrology. In her earlier life she has been a structural engineer who helped build a bridge in Syria. Tokarczuk’s text is as playful as her narrator. It takes great pleasure in Janina’s digressions and flights of fancy. It is peopled by eccentrics and oddballs, (including one character who in the english translation is named Oddball) and a Blake translating policeman. The novel is composed of 17 chapters which narrate a story which takes place over the course of a year. It is, in effect, a murder mystery, however the strongest underlying theme is the tension between humans and nature, a theme that seems more and more urgent with every passing day.
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