Lunchtime Reads with Victoria Hislop and The Island

It’s September and the sun is still shining brightly! If the warm weather has you itching for a book to read in this late summer sunshine, why not step outside this lunchtime and read one of Victoria Hislop’s best selling novels, THE ISLAND.

Inspired by a visit to Spinalonga, the abandoned Greek leprosy colony, Victoria Hislop wrote The Island in 2005. It became an international bestseller, published in thirty languages with over 3 million copies sold worldwide, and was turned into a 26 part Greek TV series. She was named Newcomer of the Year at the British Book Awards and is now an ambassador for Lepra.

‘On the brink of a life-changing decision, Alexis Fielding longs to find out about her mother’s past. But Sofia has never spoken of it. All she admits to is growing up in a small Cretan village before moving to London. When Alexis decides to visit Crete, however, Sofia gives her daughter a letter to take to an old friend, and promises that through her she will learn more.

Arriving in Plaka, Alexis is astonished to see that it lies a stone’s throw from the tiny, deserted island of Spinalonga – Greece’s former leper colony. Then she finds Fotini, and at last hears the story that Sofia has buried all her life: the tale of her great-grandmother Eleni and her daughters and a family rent by tragedy, war and passion. She discovers how intimately she is connected with the island, and how secrecy holds them all in its powerful grip…’

‘War, tragedy and passion unfurl against a Mediterranean backdrop in this engrossing debut novel’ You magazine

Buy The Island here,

If you’ve already discovered THE ISLAND, why not pre order Victoria Hislop’s gorgeous, colourful new novel CARTES POSTALES FROM GREECE here. Released on the 22nd September, it is fiction illustrated with photographs that make this journey around Greece, already alive in the imagination, linger forever in the mind. If that doesn’t entice you, escape to the blue seas of the Mediterranean and indulge in the beautiful trailer,