Explore the real-world places that appear in Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Janina's House, The Kielich Forest, The River Nysa, Jakubów Town Center, The Local Police Station and 11 more.
Outskirts of Białaczów — The narrator's isolated home
Janina Dąbrowska's modest house is the center of the novel's narrative world. Here she lives alone, surrounded by her astrological calculations, tarot cards, and her fierce protection of animals. She tends to injured dogs and cats, rails against hunters, and constructs her elaborate theory connecting animal deaths to murders. This is where she writes her manifesto and where the reader witnesses her paranoia and her genuine compassion gradually blur.
The novel is set in a real rural region of Lower Silesia near the Polish-German border. Small houses like Janina's dotted this landscape, many occupied by Polish settlers after World War II displaced German inhabitants. The area is characterized by forest, small villages, and relative isolation.
Rural Białaczów remains a small farming and forestry community in the Dolnośląskie Voivodeship. The landscape of forests and scattered homes depicted in the novel still characterizes this region.
Dense woodland surrounding Białaczów — Hunting grounds and animal sanctuary
The forest is Janina's sacred space and the setting for her animal-rescue missions. She patrols these woods obsessively, searching for wounded creatures and evidence of hunters' cruelty. The forest becomes a character itself—a repository of animal suffering and mystical significance. When hunts occur here, Janina experiences them as personal assaults. The forest also conceals the real murders that parallel the animal deaths in her mind.
Lower Silesian forests have been heavily logged and hunted for centuries. During the Cold War, this border region was restricted and less developed than other parts of Poland, allowing forests to persist in relative isolation.
The Kielich Forest and surrounding woodlands remain an active forestry and hunting region. The area is popular for outdoor recreation but remains sparsely populated.
Visit: Kielich Forest Trails (park)
Border river running through the region — Boundary and mystery
The Nysa River functions as both a literal border between Poland and the Czech Republic and as a metaphorical boundary in Janina's consciousness. She speaks of it with reverence, attributing spiritual significance to its currents. The river appears in her calculations and in scenes of contemplation. It represents both the natural world she reverences and the threshold between the rational and irrational.
The Nysa River (also called Lusatian Neisse) became an international boundary in 1945 after World War II, separating German territory from Poland. This was one of Europe's major post-war territorial shifts and significantly shaped the region's character.
The Nysa remains the Poland-Czech border. It is a site of ecological interest and is popular for kayaking and fishing. The river valley has become increasingly developed in recent decades.
Visit: Nysa River Valley Parks (park)
Central square and market — Social and administrative hub
The town represents the ordinary world from which Janina has increasingly alienated herself. She ventures here occasionally, observing the townspeople with a mixture of contempt and pity. The town council meetings, the local police station, and neighborhood gossip all take place here. Janina's isolation from town society becomes clearer through her rare interactions in this space—she is viewed as eccentric and unreliable.
Jakubów is a small town in the Dolnośląskie region that developed during the post-WWII resettlement of the Polish frontier. The town center reflects typical Polish rural architecture from the 1950s-70s.
Jakubów remains a small, quiet town serving the surrounding agricultural and forestry communities. It has a typical Polish town layout with a central square, church, and administrative buildings.
Visit: Jakubów Town Center (landmark)
Official government building — Interrogation and investigation center
After the first murder, Janina becomes entangled with the local police, who view her as increasingly suspicious. Inspector Szatan and other officers interrogate her multiple times. She is at once a witness and a suspect in their eyes, her passionate testimony about animal killings undermining her credibility. The police station becomes a site of misunderstanding where Janina's spiritual logic encounters bureaucratic rationalism.
Polish police stations like this one were established after WWII as part of the Soviet-aligned government structure. They served as both administrative and enforcement centers during the Cold War and beyond.
The police station continues to serve Jakubów and the surrounding region as part of the modern Polish police force.
Neighboring house — The murdered hunter's dwelling
Odd Job, the wealthy amateur hunter and real estate developer, lives in a well-appointed house near Janina's. He is murdered early in the novel, and his death triggers the investigation that intersects with Janina's animal-protection activities. His house represents the modern, acquisitive world that Janina despises—he hunts for sport, develops the land, and represents the new Poland of commerce. After his death, it becomes a focal point of police investigation.
Post-socialist Poland saw the emergence of a new entrepreneurial class in the 1990s, often involved in real estate speculation and development in rural border regions. Odd Job represents this new capitalist character.
The building and area remain part of private residential Białaczów, typical of rural border-region housing.
Central Jakubów church — Spiritual reference point
Janina maintains an idiosyncratic spiritual relationship with the Catholic Church. She attends services while simultaneously holding heretical beliefs about astrology, reincarnation, and a cosmic order far removed from Christian doctrine. The church represents conventional Polish Catholicism, which Janina both respects and ultimately rejects in favor of her own mystical system. Priests and townspeople view her religious syncretism with suspicion.
Churches like this were central to Polish identity, especially during the Soviet period when Catholicism became a symbol of Polish resistance. Post-1989, churches regained prominence in Polish civic life.
The Church of Our Lady continues to serve as the primary Catholic parish church for Jakubów and surrounding villages.
Visit: Church of Our Lady, Jakubów (landmark)
Community gathering place — Social observation point
The tavern is where Janina overhears conversations, observes the hunters and townspeople, and becomes increasingly aware of the social currents she exists outside of. Men gather here to discuss hunts, business, and gossip. Janina's presence is tolerated but unwelcome, and the tavern becomes another space where her alienation is underscored. It is also where rumors about her grow, contributing to her eventual suspicion in the murders.
Rural Polish taverns have long served as social centers for farming and working-class communities, places where men gather for alcohol, politics, and local news.
Small-town Polish taverns and bars continue to serve as community gathering places, though their cultural significance has diminished with modernization.
Visit: Local Tavern (Pijąca Studnia or similar) (restaurant)
Private establishment in the forest — Hunter's sanctuary
The hunting lodge represents everything Janina opposes—the organized killing of animals, the brotherhood of hunters, the masculine culture of dominance over nature. She views it as a den of evil. Several of the murdered men are hunters who frequent or own the lodge. The lodge becomes a symbol of the violence and cruelty embedded in her community. Janina's campaigns against hunting make the lodge a primary target of her moral outrage.
Hunting lodges in Lower Silesia developed during German occupation and were reestablished after 1945 as recreational facilities for the emerging Polish working and management classes. Hunting remains a significant cultural practice in rural Poland.
Hunting remains popular in rural Poland, and lodges continue to operate, though they face increasing pressure from environmental and animal-rights advocates.
Nysa, 15km south — Animal medical care
Janina occasionally takes injured animals to the veterinary clinic in the larger town of Nysa. The veterinarian represents the professional, scientific approach to animal care that contrasts with Janina's spiritual and intuitive methods. The clinic becomes a place where she seeks help for her rescued creatures, though her lack of resources and official status limits what can be done. It symbolizes the gap between her passionate intentions and practical capability.
Nysa is a historic town on the Polish-Czech border that was heavily damaged in World War II and rebuilt during the socialist period. It developed as a regional center for commerce and services.
Nysa is a functioning regional town with modern veterinary services, shops, and administrative facilities. It remains the primary market town for the surrounding region.
Visit: Nysa Town Center and Services (landmark)
Abandoned industrial site — Post-industrial decay
The novel references the industrial history of the region, and abandoned mining infrastructure haunts the landscape. Janina's spiritual worldview connects the exploitation of the earth for coal and minerals with the exploitation of animals. These ruins represent humanity's destructive relationship with nature and the earth. The desolate industrial landscape reinforces the novel's atmosphere of economic decline and environmental damage.
Lower Silesia was a major coal and mining region under German rule and continued mining operations under Polish and Soviet administration. Many mines closed in the 1990s after the fall of communism, leaving behind environmental damage and abandoned facilities.
The region contains numerous abandoned mines and industrial sites. Some have been converted to museums or parks, while others remain derelict. Environmental remediation is ongoing.
Visit: Lower Silesian Industrial Heritage Sites (historic site)
Graveyard on the town's edge — Meditation on death
Janina visits the cemetery to contemplate mortality and the interconnection of all living things. She finds graves from various periods, including German graves predating the Polish resettlement. The cemetery becomes a space for her to meditate on the cyclical nature of life and death, fitting her cosmological worldview. It is a place of both melancholy and acceptance, where she confronts the reality of human mortality alongside animal death.
The cemetery contains Polish graves from the post-1945 period as well as older German graves from before the war. It reflects the complex history of the region—the displacement of German populations and the resettlement of Poles.
The cemetery remains in active use as the burial ground for Białaczów and surrounding villages, maintained by the local community.
Visit: Białaczów Cemetery (historic site)
Jakubów public library — Janina's source of knowledge
Though not extensively featured, the library represents Janina's intellectual resources. She consults astrological texts, astronomical charts, and various esoteric materials to construct her theory connecting celestial events, animal deaths, and human murders. The library is one of the few institutions she accesses, seeking knowledge to validate her increasingly elaborate interpretive scheme.
Public libraries in Poland were established to provide education and information to rural communities, particularly in the post-WWII period. They serve as cultural centers in small towns.
The Jakubów library continues to serve the community as a public resource, though it faces challenges common to rural institutions in an increasingly digital age.
Visit: Jakubów Public Library (library)
Highway through the region — Route of investigation and movement
The road connecting various towns and villages is a recurring geographic feature. Police travel this road investigating murders, and Janina traverses it on her animal-rescue missions. It represents the connection between the isolated rural world and the larger structures of law and society. The road also marks the boundary between Janina's intimate knowledge of the forest and the official world of roads and institutions.
The road network in Lower Silesia developed during German administration and was maintained and expanded during the Polish period. Border roads received special attention during the Cold War for both administrative and security reasons.
Regional roads like this remain crucial infrastructure for rural Poland, connecting villages and towns. They are maintained by local and regional authorities.
Poland-Germany border crossing — International boundary
The proximity to the German border haunts the novel's setting. The region's German past, displaced by Polish settlement after 1945, creates a palimpsest of competing histories. Janina is aware of living in recently acquired Polish territory, formerly German Silesia. The border represents both historical rupture and continued European division. Some characters have connections across the border, suggesting ongoing permeability despite official separation.
Görlitz and Zgorzelec (on the Polish side) were divided by the Oder-Neisse Line in 1945, separating Germany from Poland. During the Cold War, this was a heavily fortified border. After 1989 and German reunification, it became a regular EU border crossing.
The Görlitz-Zgorzelec border crossing is now an open EU border with free movement of people and goods. The towns have been reconnecting culturally and economically. The border is still visible but no longer represents a significant barrier.
Visit: Görlitz-Zgorzelec Border Region (historic site)
High ground overlooking the region — Vantage point for cosmic vision
From elevated points in the landscape, Janina conducts her astrological observations and attempts to align terrestrial events with celestial movements. These high points provide both literal vantage from which to survey her domain and metaphorical spaces where she communes with her cosmic vision. The landscape spread below becomes a text to be read through astrological interpretation.
The Silesian region contains moderate elevation changes that have been significant for human settlement patterns, agriculture, and visibility. These high points have historically been important for defense and observation.
The region's topography remains unchanged, with various scenic overlooks and high points offering views of the forested landscape.
Visit: Regional Scenic Overlooks (park)
More by Olga Tokarczuk: All Olga Tokarczuk books
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