From Barbara Hodgson, author of The Sensualist, The Tattooed Map, and Hippolyte's Island, comes another exquisite work of illustrated fiction. Evocative of a beautiful-but-now-vanished Middle East, Lives of Shadows is set against the rich backdrop of post-WWI Damascus. Interweaving poetic prose and evocative illustration, Hodgson tells the story of an Englishman, Julian, transfixed by the beautiful house he's inherited. When threatened with the loss his beloved house, he struggles to unravel its history and his deep connection to it. All the while, a strangely protective and tender being hovers in the shadows, confounding Julian's attempts to hold onto both his home and his grip on reality.