43 pages • 1 hour read
Olga TokarczukA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
A 60-something woman named Janina Duszejko lives in a Polish mountain village along the Czech border. She suffers from various aches and pains and has taken some herbs to help her sleep when her rest is disturbed. A neighbor arrives in the middle of the night to announce that another neighbor has died. Janina believes that people’s names don’t reveal anything about their character, so she invents nicknames for everyone she knows. She calls her next-door neighbor Oddball, while the deceased is known as Big Foot.
Everyone dislikes Big Foot because he poaches the local wildlife and is neglectful toward his little dog. Nevertheless, Janina and Oddball go to his house and find him dead on the kitchen floor. Apparently, he has choked on a bone from his supper. Janina considers this to be poetic justice since he was feasting on a poached deer carcass. This is one of the animals that Janina has been watching during the cold, dark winter. Because Janina is an amateur astrologer, she searches for Big Foot’s identity papers, hoping to find his birth date. She wants to cast his chart to see if she can find aspects indicating his death, so she scribbles down his birth data for later.
By Olga Tokarczuk
Books on Justice & Injustice
View Collection
Earth Day
View Collection
Horror, Thrillers, & Suspense
View Collection
Mystery & Crime
View Collection
National Book Awards Winners & Finalists
View Collection
Nobel Laureates in Literature
View Collection
Revenge
View Collection
Satire
View Collection
The Best of "Best Book" Lists
View Collection
The Booker Prizes Awardees & Honorees
View Collection