Desmond began his career as a journalist living in Cyprus but has spent most of it working in banking & finance, including an extended period living in the Persian Gulf. Why the switch? “It was a wonderful life at the time,” he says, “but after a while I grew restless and wanted to try my hand at something else.” His interest in the wider Middle East was sparked initially when he read Arabic & Persian at St Peter’s College, Oxford.

In the time of the Mulberry is his debut novel, set among the bucolic villages of Mount Lebanon and their surrounding cities. His vivid accounts of the landscape derive from the various hiking expeditions he has made over the years and a fascination with discovering its remote corners firsthand.

In the just-published sequel (In the Time of Confusion), he follows his heroine Rose to Louisiana, first to New Orleans and then Lake Charles down by the Texas border. Why Lake Charles? “Because I came across taped interviews with a handful of Syrian migrants. Some had arrived there before the First World War and their stories inspired me,” he says.