More from the Runciman Award shortlist
The next of our shortlisted books is Lifelines by Julian Hoffman.
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, which they would soon call 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 is the author of three books. His latest, Lifelines: Searching for Home in the Mountains of Greece, was an FT Book of the Summer in 2025. Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save our Wild Places was the Highly Commended Finalist for the 2020 Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation, while his debut, The Small Heart of Things, was the winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature in 2014. Although he was born in the UK and grew up in Canada, Julian has lived beside the Prespa lakes in northern Greece for the past quarter of a century.
