The Shadow in the Backyard

By Charles Hohmann

The Shadow in the Backyard

Alexandria in the 1930s: a city between sea and desert, between cosmopolitan brilliance and hidden poverty, between colonial order and intellectual unrest. At its heart, Louis Schuler runs a small bookshop-an island of words, encounters, and quiet freedoms.

Surrounded by British officers, Egyptian students, artists, and banned books, Schuler's shop becomes a meeting place where art, literature, and politics collide. Surrealism, Freud, Marx, Dostoyevsky-ideas that can liberate, and endanger. As surveillance tightens and informers draw closer, Schuler realizes that books are more than commodities: they are acts of resistance.

At the same time, memories surface-the loss of his wife, the underground cisterns of Alexandria, the sunken city beneath the sea-mirroring his struggle with truth and identity. What is visible deceives; what is hidden endures. The Shadow in the Backyard is a subtle historical novel about books as refuge, art as resistance, and a city whose light always casts shadows.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1971228729
• ISBN13: 9781971228723
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Charles Hohmann
• Length: 226 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.5" x 5.0"