Among the Libyan authors to have risen to prominence in the 2000s, ʿAbdallah al-Ghazal (b.1965) has, through his three novels and their allusive, introspective and at times horrifying aesthetics, been recognised as a pioneering new voice. From al-Tabut (2004, The Coffin) to al-Khawf Abqani Hayyan (2008, Fear Kept me Breathing), his writing addresses major incidents from Libya's recent history, infused with palpable fear, hidden truths and traumas. Having lived and worked in Libya as an oil engineer for most of his adult life, the frustrated nostalgia of exile, seen in the writing of al-Nayhum, al-Faqih and al-Kuni, shifts to immediate vulnerability. Nevertheless, in many respects, his writing also remains deeply connected to that of his predecessors, and specifically al-Kuni whom he, like many Libyan authors, cites as an influence, and whose writing resonates through his own in a poetics interweaving fragile ‘signs’ and vulnerable creatures. Through the striking parallels in their writing, I conclude my discussion of al-Kuni as a central figure within the development of Libyan fiction, elucidating aspects of his veiled yet creaturely poetics, drawn out by a reading of al-Ghazal's more explicit depictions of contemporary Libya. Together, they frame my discussion in Part II of writers from the 2000s, whose enigmatic, allegorical novels form a dense web of responses to censorship, trauma and environmental degradation, anchored in animals, art and melancholy landscapes. Toying with the censor, authors subvert what Barthes terms the ‘propriety of symbolic systems’, imbuing them with a shifting mix of political, psychological and spiritual import. A continuation of the ‘difficult stories’ explored so far, ‘signs’ appear in more self-conscious terms, liable to exposure and simultaneously able to metamorphose and slip into the shadows. With ‘fear’ as the pulsing heart of his novels, al-Ghazal exemplifies this, binding present vulnerability with past traumas in a constant search for absent, healing signification.