Stones of Loneliness

The year is 1913. Seventy-two selected men, Albanian Muslims from the disputed region of Chameria, were lured to Paramitia by the Greek bishop with an olive branch, but were beaten to death and their souls, swept away by the murky waters of the river of death and finding no rest, inhabited the dreams and visions of the living for years. Among them is Avdul, belonging to a large Albanian community of conspiratorial pilgrims of the cross and crescent.

With juicy language and empathy, but also with gentle humour, Tom Hook unfolds an epic saga of the varied human destinies of simple folk with old ways, of hard men and strong women, of boys and girls with hot blood. A historical-fiction novel of ancestral memory, of roots and traditions, of forced exile from native lands, of primal love, peppered with lore, omens and legends, permeated by the memory of the past and the omnipresent presence of She with the Hair. So that, in the words of Tom Hook, the disturbing voice of the Balkans will not be silenced and what happened in the bloody 20th century will not be repeated.