The town of Nowa Ruda and the surrounding countryside is a place of shifting identities. Polish now, it has been German, Czech and Austro-Hungarian in the past. Here, in the heart of Europe, where borders move and languages and their speakers come and go, ordinary lives are not as simple as they appear. When the narrator and her husband settle in the area, she soon discovers that all the locals have their secrets and with the help of Marta, her enigmatic old neighbour, she gathers their stories, disentangling the events of their days from the dreams of their nights.
