House of Day, House of Night, primarily explores the lives of people living in the Polish region of Silesia, a former German territory close to the border of the Czech Republic. Classified as a borderland, the border is important not only politically, but personally as well, with characters defining themselves and their lives through the nation they live in, reflecting borderlands as an ontological condition.

Tokarczuk’s narrator lives near the border, observing different kinds of border crossings throughout the novel. Despite her proximity, she struggles to recognize the legitimacy of the border, seeing it not as a rigid line but a fictional boundary preserved by men. She often crosses the border, wandering through the woods. Therefore, she does not fully recognize the authority of the border guard, instead pretending as if they are protecting something else: “We’ve gotten used to being watched day and night by the border guards […] dozens of men in uniform guard the weed-choked strip of land where raspberries grow large and fragrant with no fear of being uprooted. It would be easier for us to believe they were guarding the raspberries” (78). These raspberries demonstrate how the border constructs the narrator’s perception of her home. She pretends as though the guards protect the raspberries, large and fragrant from the lack of human intervention.