After the failed revolutions of 1848, Galicia has been brought under the rule of the Habsburg Empire, and the Zemka family find themselves embroiled in the struggle for Polish independence. This is a history of Eastern Europe told in miniature through the tumultuous saga of one family as they try to reclaim their estate in the decades of violence and political confusion that follow. In this extraordinary novel, Diane Meur calls upon an unusual narrator: the ancestral house itselfthe House of Shadows of the titlewhich, from behind its unmoving facade, watches the comings and goings of...