Michael M. Naydan is best known internationally as one of the foremost translators of Ukrainian and Russian literature, from Yuri Andrukhovych to Marina Tsvetaeva. In The Eighth Sign of the Lion, he returns to his own fiction, continuing the story begun in Seven Signs of the Lion (2016). Nicholas Bilanchuk reappears in Lviv, the magical city of lions, after what felt like minutes but was in fact a decade confronting cosmic forces beyond explanation. As he reconnects with old friends, former loves and a new romance in Andzhela, buried trauma resurfaces, along with the possibility of real healing. Set in 2019, three years before the full-scale invasion, the novel carries a quiet ache its predecessor could not have known.