house of day house of night olga tokarczuk

Nowa Ruda, the city central to Olga Tokarczuk's first English-translated novel House of Day, House of Night, lies firmly in the Silesia territory, near the Czech border. When the land became Polish again in 1945, German families were deported to make room for displaced Poles, colonists in this 'new' territory. In the West, Poland gained a swath of land including a region called Silesia, a bit of territory that hadn't been under Polish rule since the fourteenth century, when King Casimir the Great turned the land over to Bohemia in a peace treaty.

In the East, cities and territories long considered Polish were absorbed by neighboring countries. After the Second World War, its eastern and western borders were shifted, effectively moving the whole country 150 miles west. Some parts of the country were reinstated at various times in the nineteenth century, but it wasn't until after World War One that a majority of the country gained independence. In the eighteenth century, Poland's powerful neighbors-Prussia, Austria, and Russia-began divvying up the land between the Odra and the Bug until Poland disappeared from the map in 1795. Konrad offered the Order the small province of CheBmno (Kulm) in payment, but instead the Knights helped themselves to the land they conquered-a run of Baltic coast stretching from Gdan'sk (Danzig) to Estonia-and in the process became another neighbor in dispute with the Polish state. In 1226, Polish Prince Konrad of Mazovia invited the Teutonic Knights into Poland to help end harassment from its Prussian Neighbors. Around 966 A.D., Mieszko I avoided a conflict with Czech neighbors by accepting a Catholic baptism. Or, more precisely, Poland has had border problems at least since the beginnings of its recorded history back in the tenth century. House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonio Lloyd-Jones Northwestern University Press, 2003 304 pages $17.95 paperback

House of day house of night olga tokarczuk