Book excerpt: At several points in the haunting Dukla, Andrzej Stasiuk claims that what he is trying to do is "write a book about light." The result is a beautiful, lyrical series of evocations of a very specific locale at different times of the year, in different kinds of weather, and with different human landscapes. Dukla, in fact, is a real place: a small resort town not far from where Stasiuk now lives. Taking an usual form—a short essay, a novella, and then a series of brief portraits of local people or events—this book, though bordering on the metaphysical, the mystical, even the supernatural, never loses sight of the particular time, and above all place, in which it is rooted. Andrzej Stasiuk is one of the leading writers of Poland's younger generation, and is currently one of the most popular Polish novelists in English translation.