House of Day, House of Night
House of Day, House of Night is a novel by Olga Tokarczuk, first published in 1998 as Dom dzienny, dom nocny by Wydawnictwo Ruta in Wałbrzych, Poland. It isn’t a single story; it’s a patchwork of loosely connected stories, sketches, and essays about life in Krajanów, a village near the Polish-Czech border in the Sudetes.
Some readers call it Tokarczuk’s most difficult work, especially for those not familiar with Central European history. It was also her first book to be published in English.
In Poland, the 1998 edition sold about 40,000 copies in 1999, making it a notable bestseller. In 2000, Bertelsmann published the novel online as a plain text, the first Polish novel to be published on the Internet, helping to start Poland’s e-book market.
The English translation, by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, appeared in the UK in 2002 via Granta Books and in the US in 2003 via Northwestern University Press. Fitzcarraldo Editions released a new edition of the translation in September 2025.
Critics praised the work. Jarosław Klejnocki called it Tokarczuk’s most ambitious prose project, and Dariusz Nowacki moved from critique to praise. Kinga Dunin praised Tokarczuk’s unique voice and thought the book could help readers cope with death anxiety. Przemysław Czapliński described it as one of the most beautiful “forest-like” works in Polish literature. The novel won the Władysław Reymont Award in 1998 and the Nike Award’s audience prize in 1999.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 04:27 (CET).