One August Night by Victoria Hislop

 

Hardback:  230 pages

Genre:  Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction

Publisher: Headline 2020

Source:  Tywyn Public Library

First Sentences: For some women, pregnancy is a period of good health and joyful expectation, but for Anna Vandoulakis it was a time of misery and nausea.

Review Quote:  A return to Hislop's thyme-scented, Aegean-lapped fictional Greece ― The Sunday Times on One August Night

My Opinion:  

Victoria Hislop in ‘One August Night’ has in her own words ‘opened a door that has been closed for awhile and stepped through it once more’ to let her readers know what happened next after the open ended conclusion she left us with in ‘The Island.’

A cure for leprosy has now been found and in this sequel we are reunited with Anna, Maria, Manolis and Andreas and other characters, in the weeks leading up to the evacuation of the island and afterwards as life moves on for the families.

Once again the author has written an engaging portrayal of Greece and its people through the pages of a novel. Recommended reading for fans of Victoria Hislop and Greece, also the story will make more sense if you have read ‘The Island.’

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads: 

Beloved author Victoria Hislop returns to Crete in this long-anticipated sequel to her multi-million-copy Number One bestseller, The Island.

25th August 1957. The island of Spinalonga closes its leper colony. And a moment of violence has devastating consequences.

When time stops dead for Maria Petrakis and her sister, Anna, two families splinter apart and, for the people of Plaka, the closure of Spinalonga is forever coloured with tragedy.

In the aftermath, the question of how to resume life looms large. Stigma and scandal need to be confronted and somehow, for those impacted, a future built from the ruins of the past.

Author Profile:         

Courtesy of Amazon

Inspired by a visit to Spinalonga, the abandoned Greek leprosy colony, Victoria Hislop wrote The Island in 2005. It became an international bestseller, has sold more than six million copies 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. Her affection for the Mediterranean then took her to Spain, and in the number one bestseller The Return she wrote about the painful secrets of its civil war. In The Thread, Victoria returned to Greece to tell the turbulent tale of Thessaloniki and its people across the twentieth century. Shortlisted for a British Book Award, it confirmed her reputation as an inspirational storyteller.

Her fourth novel, The Sunrise, about the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the enduring ghost town of Famagusta, was a Sunday Times number one bestseller. Cartes Postales from Greece, fiction illustrated with photographs, followed and was one of the biggest selling books of 2016. The poignant and powerful Those Who Are Loved was a Sunday Times number one hardback bestseller in 2019 and explores a tempestuous period of modern Greek history through the eyes of a complex and compelling heroine. Victoria's most recent novel, One August Night, returns to Crete in the long-anticipated sequel to The Island. The novel spent twelve weeks in the Top 10 hardback fiction charts.

Her books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages.

Victoria divides her time between England and Greece and in 2020, Victoria was granted honorary citizenship by the President of Greece. She was recently appointed patron of Knossos 2025, which is raising funds for a new research centre at one of Greece's most significant archaeological sites. She is also on the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.

Photographs and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites:

Victoria Hislop - Website   Goodreads Profile   Facebook Profile. Twitter Profile