White Nights

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE

In a village in the remote countryside of southern Poland, it's as if the poverty and brutality emanate like mist from the cursed dirt. The thirteen interconnected stories in White Nights tell of families, scarred by tragedy but also by each other. Whether by digging a pond deep in the woods, taking a lover, raising a family, or simply trying to get ahead of the endless work as the thunder rolls over their home, Urszula Honek's charactersshare, with the sincerest care and honesty, a local--yet so clearly universal--story of ruin and hope. A story in which they do not ask to be understood, but merely to be heard.



Kate Webster's brilliant translation of Urszula's poetic, yet often earthen, prose brings us to places that, though they are seldom seen in literature, we may never forget.