Olga Tokarczuk’s House of Day, House of Night, is her fourth novel of many, translated exquisitely by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. The narrative covers a patchwork of experiences centred around Nowa Ruda,
a Polish town, which previously was mapped as part of Germany.
Life is not neat – and neither is this book, which behaves like a chronicle-cum-compote of various delicious texts – resembling a family almanac. Set after the fall of the communist regime, our main narrator shares stories from her house, built atop a stream. These follow the town’s denizens as their histories touch each other over centuries.
Their dreamlike abandon blurs with waking reality. There are saints who transcend gender and displaced doppels, poisonous recipes for ruin and fevered brains that long for oblivion. There are crows beneath the skin, wigs sewn from female friendship, and neighbours who crave love’s understanding.
I was utterly enraptured by the mushrooming magic of Tokarczuk’s landscape, how she tugs at borders in their ceaseless, irrational cruelties.
House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones is out 11 September (Fitzcarraldo, £14.99). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.
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