I’m delighted to say that my new book, Lifelines, was published last week, nearly twenty-five years after my wife, Julia, and I arrived in Prespa in northern Greece with the aim of radically changing our lives. All we had to go on at the time was the book about the region that had convinced us it was the place we should move to after reading it over too much wine one evening in our apartment in London. Showing up here, of course, was just the beginning of our journey, because the far greater, challenging and more rewarding one was the journey into a place and its community of people and wild species as we tried to make a home for ourselves in this crossroads landscape of mountains and lakes shared by three countries: Greece, Albania and North Macedonia. Not in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine we might still be here all this time later, but it seems that books can, and do, fundamentally change our lifelines.
This is a book of homecoming. It’s a story about the people of these mountains, the rare pelicans nesting on the lakes, the borders that divide the waters and the brown bears that forage in the valley behind our house. It’s a story of incredible generosity and welcome, having arrived here with overloaded rucksacks holding everything we thought we might need in these new lives of ours but with absolutely no idea of what would come next on our journey. A story, ultimately, of a shared world. And because it’s a shared world, this book isn’t just about the move we made to a mountain village above these ancient lakes, but brings together other home places and stories of shelter and resilience from across the planet. At a time when the climate and biodiversity crises are undermining the stability of the single sphere we share, it’s about the ways in which the lifelines of the world hold together the greater home of us all.
I’m deeply grateful for the incredibly generous early endorsements from writers and conservationists whose work I’ve long admired. And I’d like to say an immense thank you to Ola Galewicz for her stunning cover and to Matina Galati for her beautiful map and interior illustrations. An excerpt of the book has just been published online by the wonderful Caught by the River. It’s a short section from the introduction of Lifelines on the seasonal return of pelicans to these mountain lakes and it can be read here.
Lifelines is now available to buy or order from you favourite indie bookshops and all the usual sites where it’s currently out, some of which I’ve listed further down. A North American edition is coming next spring with its own beautiful cover design. And I’m excited to be able to share a series of events I’m doing in southern England in June (we hope to have some additional events further north and elsewhere later in the year!) More info and booking details for each event can be found on my events page or by clicking on the links below:
June 11th at Owl Bookshop, London, with Ruth Padel
June 12th at FOLDE in Shaftsbury, Dorset
June 16th: Heligan Homecoming Festival, Cornwall
June 19th: Liznojan Bookshop in Tiverton, Devon
June 21st: Wealden Literary Festival, Kent
June 24th: Summertown Daunts, Oxford with Charles Foster
June 25th: Mr B’s Emporium, Bath with Richard Kerridge
June 26th: Victoria Waterstones, London with Gaia Vince
June 30th: Sevenoaks Bookshop, Sevenoaks
I do hope you enjoy the book and please let me know if you have any questions at all. I’ll finish this post with a photo of our Prespa village under snow (it’s not quite Greece of the imagination up here!), and of Julia and I in our fields many years ago when we decided to become organic market gardeners on the outskirts of the same village. Thanks for reading!
* * *
Booktique (Greece – signed copies in stock, Kolonaki, Athens – contact to reserve)
Discover more from Julian Hoffman
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Julian Hoffman 
Hello Julian, I receive your book last week and start to read it. I love it so much! I take my time to enjoy every passage. Your experience echoes my own in Kerkini, where I lived for more than 4 years. I will tell you more later… Friendly regards,Catherine
Hello Catherine – thank you ever so much for these kind words. I’m so pleased you’re enjoying the book and it’s wonderful to know you had a similar experience in Kerkini! It’s been a while since we were last in Kerkini but I feel like it’s time to return again. And I’m still so grateful for the wonderful translation you did of the pelican essay a couple of years ago, which meant I was able to send it out to several organisations as well. Thank you and hope all is well!