Nowa Ruda is a small town in Silesia, a region that has at times been part of Poland, Germany, and the former Czechoslovakia. When the narrator of Olga Tokarczuk's House of Day, House of Night moves into the area, she discovers that everyone - and everything - has a story. With the help of Martha, her enigmatic neighbor, she collects these stories, and what emerges is the message that the history of any place - no matter how humble - is limitless and universal.

Tokarczuk's richly imagined novel is an epic of a small place. A best-seller in Poland, House of Day, House of Night is the English-language debut of one of Europe's best young writers.

Olga Tokarczuk, born in 1962, studied psychology at teh University of Warsaw before publishing her first book, a poetry collection. She is the author of a prizewinning play, four novels, and two books of short stories and has received two Nike reader's Prizes.