This brilliant novel is an illustrated novel, which makes it all the more intriguing.
The story is centered around Julian Beaufort, a soldier, who fell in love with a house and its city in beautiful Damascus, Syria at the turn of the 20th century. Julian was able to purchase the house from the family that had owned it for 200 years and then he went to war in the British army. After an injury caused him to be discharged, he made his way to his home, only to find that the house had suffered damage from the war he’d just left.
His only companions the old family maid, a porter, and his Arabic translator, Julian sets forth to restoring the house to its former grandeur. The book opens twenty years later when Julian discovers that someone else has laid claim to his house. Julian retreats to his journals that recount his journey, his arrival and his work on the house. Included are photos, news clippings, sketches and blueprints. Julian then begins to recount the prescence of the house…
And it only gets better from there.
This is a book you may not want to pass on to others, or to sell. It draws you into that long, lost world until you become one of the house’s shadows. Read this late at night, when all is silent.
