Lifelines

A story of shelter, generosity and welcome. A story of searching for home in the mountains and lakes of northern Greece. In the summer of 2000, Julian Hoffman and his wife Julia found themselves disillusioned with city life. Overwhelmed by long commutes, they stumbled upon a book about Prespa, Greece - a remote corner of Europe filled with stone villages, snow-capped mountains and wildlife. What began as curiosity soon transformed into a life-changing decision: to make Prespa their home. Prespa is a crossroads. Where three countries come together around two huge lakes, where limestone collides with granite and heat-pulsing Mediterranean ecosystems meet their colder, Balkan relatives. Here, languages, wartime histories and rivers converge, and pelicans, bears and people leave their footprints on the water's edge - next to unexploded bombs. Lifelines is not only the tale of a courageous leap into a new life, but of seasons punctuated by unforgettable encounters, from a stare-down with a bear surrounded by Spring wildflowers to a deep-winter meeting with fourteen wrens sheltering above a frozen doorway. And into this place encircled by mountains, Julian seamlessly weaves an intricate web of stories - of conflict and possibility; of refuge lost and found; of the wild lifelines that connect us all as we move through the world seeking a home. 'Julian Hoffman's writing is knockout beautiful, perceptive, sensitive, thoughtful, beguiling, deeply smart, full of humanity, and a lifeline in itself.' Keggie Carew, author of Dadland

Auteur

Julian Hoffman is one of our most thoughtful writers on the natural world. He is the author of two previous books, Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save our Wild Places (Highly Commended Finalist for the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation 2020; Royal Geographical Society 'Book of the Year' 2020; shortlisted for ASLE UK Book Prize for Literature and Environment 2021) and The Small Heart of Things (Winner of both the 2012 AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction and the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature, as well as being a finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year in Ecology and Environment and the ASLE Book Award for Literature and Environment). Although he was born in the UK and grew up in Canada, Julian has lived for the past quarter of a century beside the Prespa lakes in the mountains of northern Greece.