House of Day, House of Night (Dom dzienny, dom nocny)

Translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

A woman settles in a remote Polish village. It has few inhabitants, but it teems with the stories of its living and its dead. There’s the drunk Marek Marek, who discovers that he shares his body with a bird, and Franz Frost, whose nightmares come to him from a newly discovered planet. There’s the man whose death – with one leg on the Polish side, one on the Czech – was an international incident. And there are the Germans who still haunt a region that not long ago they called their own. From the founding of the town to the lives of its saints, these shards piece together not only a history but a cosmology. Another brilliant ‘constellation novel’ in the mode of her International Booker Prize-winning Flights, House of Day, House of Night is a brilliantly imaginative epic novel of a small place by Olga Tokarczuk, one of the most daring and ambitious novelists of our time.

Praise for House of Day, House of Night:

‘House of Day, House of Night is full of death, destruction and dreams. Written in 1998, and now translated into English, it is what Tokarczuk calls a “constellation” novel. It is made up of bits of memoir, dream diary, metaphysical musings and sketches of life in Tokarczuk’s adopted home of rural Krajanow, southwest Poland…. House of Day, House of Night is packed with chewy philosophical ideas and spellbinding images.’

— The Times

‘[A] mosaic of stories, myths, gossip, anecdotes, philosophical reveries and even recipes. Together, these fragments form a history of the region, Tokarczuk’s adopted home in Krajanów in south-west Poland…. Tokarczuk’s reflections are saturated with sensory language that conveys a vivid sense of the landscape and seasonal change – floods, meadow fires and gales. She also displays unnerving prescience in recognizing the latent force of technology and AI.’

—  Financial Times

‘[A] mesmerizing showcase of Tokarczuk’s skills at blending a scrupulous attentiveness to the most humdrum detail of village life in rural Poland with startling forays into the realms of the uncanny…. In what Tokarczuk herself has called a “constellation-novel”, she has brought together her own galaxy of compelling case histories and the result is unfailingly revealing. Her trusted intermediary, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, is the best accomplice Tokarczuk could have wished for in another triumph of the translator’s art.’ 

—  Irish Times

“Bewitching … Junctures and borderlands are rich sources of material for Tokarczuk — the gray areas of gender, the separation of mind and body, the line between the human and the natural worlds… [She] is an excellent storyteller.”

 —The New York Times Book Review

“A new edition of an early Olga Tokarczuk novel is cause for celebration… For those many fans who have only read Tokarczuk’s recent work, this earlier novel should not be missed.” 

—The Boston Globe

“Evoke[s] a world in which light and darkness are always intermingling, and where modernity cannot be disentangled from folk belief. . . The kaleidoscope of tales and vignettes, and the blurring of the banal with the macabre, produces a dusky, dreamlike atmosphere that envelopes one’s thoughts like a fine mist.”

—Wall Street Journal

“Strange and delightful. . . Few writers are able to create a constellation of myths, rumors, and humanity like Tokarczuk. House of Day, House of Night is more than a welcome addition to her impressive oeuvre.” 

—The Chicago Review of Books

“In a landscape of darkness, dreams, and drink, this novel is more than the sum of its eerie parts.” 

—Vulture

“A poetic, rich work of art that ebbs and flows like a stream. . . Moments of absurdity. . .mix in with moments of rich emotion, all topped with a swirl of folklore-like magic. A treat for fans of Tokarczuk and literary fiction.”

—Booklist, STARRED

“As a whole, the book is at once simpler and, at the same time, infinitely more complex than it at first appears. An exquisitely constructed, mercurial gem from the Nobel prizewinner.” 

—Kirkus, STARRED

“Vivid… What emerges from this cornucopia of curiosities is a rich and pulsating view into life itself, which the narrator views as ‘beautiful despite the terrible things other people say about it.’ It’s a marvel.” 

—Publishers Weekly, STARRED

‘House of Day, House of Night is packed with chewy philosophical ideas and spellbinding images.’ 

– The Australian

‘It is certainly a treat for the sheer number of flights of imagination and the creation of a small community of fascinating characters’

- New Zealand Listener

‘If you’re not familiar with Tokarczuk’s fiction, don’t put off any longer an encounter with the profound mystery at the heart of her work—and at the heart of yourself.’

- Saturday Paper