House of Day, House of Night

by Olga Tokarczuk

In a region that was once Germany but is now Poland, a woman and her husband make a life in a house where a stream runs through the foundation. Their neighbors include Marta, an older woman and wig maker, and So-and-so, who tells the story of how young Marek Marek hanged himself. Other stories weave through this place: a man dies on the Czech border and his body is dragged from one side to the other; a young monk writes the story of a saint and longs desperately to be a woman; a husband and wife each fall in love with a mysterious visitor, neither of them knowing of the other’s indiscretion. Occasionally, Germans are seen walking through the fields at night, digging in the ground. There’s a question here about place and displacement, about what happens when the people who built a town come to haunt it, and the people who live in it walk lightly over the ground.

Translator
Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Publisher
Riverhead
Year
1998
Collection
Fiction
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Selected essays

Writing essays & notes

  1. The open universe

    On The Language of the Night and The Real World of Technology

  2. Umyazu

    Reading is the art of attention.

Reading books

  1. Was

    by Geoff Ryman

  2. Kraken

    by China Miéville

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