Shattered Hooves in Hayrdahodahus

Description

This novel—an epic penned by Barakat during his seclusion in the Skogås forest on the outskirts of Stockholm—is steeped in the fantastic. It chronicles the lives of beings who are half-human and half-horse, picking up where the earlier novel *The Caves of Hayrdahodahus* left off. It is another saga detailing the destinies of these hybrid creatures. Azinon—a poet who, by mutual agreement with the princess herself, impersonates the missing Prince Theoni—finds himself torn between a desire to escape this deceptive game and the allure of remaining a prince in the Great Cave, sustained by the power of the ruse. His obsession with the *Ursin*—a sculpted human likeness on a tablet—transforms him into a Pygmalion figure haunted by a bloody dream; this vision ultimately drives him to cleave his own brother in two. Meanwhile, Toksa—the daughter of the missing Prince Theoni—attempts to reorder the shattered rules, a process that sweeps away countless shattered hooves in its wake.