Though at first glance the present-

Though at first glance the present-day characters of House seem native to the local world described by the narrator, they are in fact transplants to the western region of Poland. Ergo Sum, the local classics teacher, was born in the town of Boryslav (Borysław) in Polish-controlled Eastern Galicia and studied in Lviv (Lwów) (H 177-178). We also learn how the Bobol family is forced to migrate from the east to the new western territories and is quartered in a house still occupied by its German owners. The narrator herself is a summer resident who lives in a house built by a German. The stories of the “repatriates” heighten a sense of displacement in the text providing the flipside to the poetics of nostalgic return as seen in małe ojczyzny literature. These stories also undermine the “authentic” Polishness of the region by calling attention to the complex biographies of the region’s inhabitants who have only resided there for a generation or two. Only Marta is presented as an ephemeral character, whose past is left ambiguous, and whose all-knowing presence in the region seems eternal.