The Trees

by Ali Shaw

  Thank you to Helen Garnons-Williams for your faith in me and your incredible insight, and an office full of leaves and whisperers.

  Thanks most of all to Iona Shaw, for listening through each draft of this thing and always having the words to say when I have none. I seem very good at getting lost in the woods: thank you for leading me out of them every time.

  A Note on the Author

  Ali Shaw is the author of The Girl with Glass Feet, which won the Desmond Elliott Prize, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and was longlisted for the Guardian first book award. His second novel, The Man Who Rained, was published in 2013. He grew up in Dorset and graduated from Lancaster University with a degree in English Literature. He has since worked as a bookseller and at the Bodleian Library. He now lives in Oxford, with his wife and baby daughter.

  @Ali_Shaw

  alishaw.co.uk

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  The Girl with Glass Feet

  The Man Who Rained

  First published in Great Britain 2016

  This electronic edition published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  © Ali Shaw, 2016

  Ali Shaw has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

  Extract from Dante’s Inferno, The Indiana Critical Edition, Dante Alighieri. Translated and edited by Mark Musa, Copyright © 1995 by Indiana University Press. Reprinted with permission of Indiana University Press.

  This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 4088 6225 4

  eISBN 978 1 4088 6226 1

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