Hislop, Victoria "One August Night"

Hislop, Victoria "One August Night" - 2020

I absolutely love Victoria Hislop. My first book by her was "The Island" and I have read all her subsequent novels (see here). All of them were fantastic, great stories with a lot of information mainly about Greece but also some other Southern European countries (Cyprus, Spain, Turkey).

Fourteen years after her first novel, the sequel to it was published. It is the end of the leper colony in Greece since they found a cure. That is great news for some since their loved ones return, not so good news for others who fear their lives will change. And they do.

A drama that occurs on the return changes the life of everyone whom we got to know in the first book. It would have been nice to learn more about other inhabitants of Spinalonga but we learn more about Maria who spent a long time of her life there.

As in all her novels, Victoria Hislop tells us a lot about her beloved country Greece. She has been made an honorary citizen in the meantime, a well-deserved recognition. I always love her describing the Greek whom I got to know as a warm and loving people. And her stories always have a feeling of truth, you can believe the people really existed, they led this life. She always brings me back to Crete which I really love.

I am already looking forward to her next book which she will hopefully write soon.

From the back cover:

"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.

Number one bestselling author Victoria Hislop returns to the world and characters she created in The Island - the award-winning novel that remains one of the biggest selling reading group novels of the century. It is finally time to be reunited with Anna, Maria, Manolis and Andreas in the weeks leading up to the evacuation of the island... and beyond."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2022.