Ring of Lions - Softcover

Dalglish, Cass

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1962834344 ISBN 13: 9781962834346

Publisher: Calumet Editions, 2025

Synopsis

Something very strange is happening to the ring of stone lions at the center of the Alhambra, lions that have refused to spit water for five hundred years, until suddenly one of the lions is gushing every evening. Ring of Lions explores the power of memory as mysteries around the last Moorish kings of Spain become entangled with a series of recent deaths at the Alhambra, the castle of the last Emir of Granada. The novel leads readers across timelines and through folktales as the story is told by characters of several generations whose cultural, religious and academic motives have drawn them to the Alhambra. In the shadow of the novel lives a fable about animals, a tale adapted from the “Story of the Ring Dove,” a text that plays a significant role in the philosophy of the Muslim Neoplatonist Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ in medieval Spain.

• ★★★★★ “Dalglish writes her characters vividly as she weaves the history of the Alhambra and the Moors’ influence into her plot so carefully a reader doesn’t realize how much knowledge she absorbs.” (Mary Ann Grossman, St. Paul Pioneer Press)


• ★★★★★ “Reminiscent of Arturo Pérez-Reverte, A. S. Byatt, and Umberto Eco, Dalglish brings together history, architecture, and myth in a murder mystery peopled by transatlantic characters, including two young Americans, one from Cuba and one from New York, tracing their heritage back to southern Spain. In this compelling novel, their personal investment in Spanish history drives our own fascination with its complexities and its far-reaching legacy.” (Becky Boling & D. E. Green, Co-Poets Laureate of Northfield 2023-2024.)


• ★★★★★ “I was delighted to feel the influence here, too, of A. S. Byatt’s Possession (1990). Both it and Dalglish’s Ring of Lions draw on the tools of detective fiction, although setting their stories among learned scholars and collectors. Both novels demonstrate that a thirst for knowledge and a penchant for solving puzzles aren’t the only burning passions propelling such work.” (Devoney Looser, author, Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës)

Edition details

• Publisher: Calumet Editions
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1962834344
• ISBN 13: 9781962834346
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 302