British author Victoria Hislop is best known for her books about Greece that blend familial drama with the complicated and fraught history of the nation. Her books have sold millions of copies worldwide and are book club favorites, particularly in the UK.
Her promotion of Greek history and culture was so notable that she granted honorary Greek citizenship in 2020 and even appeared on the Greek version of Dancing with the Stars. If you like beach reads with some historical heft amid the scenic locales and soapy family drama, then Hislop's books are for you. Here are eight Victoria Hislop books you should read.
The Return
Sonia Cameron has come to the beautiful city of Alhambra, Granada, to dance. She knows nothing of this place's dark and shocking past, but a chance encounter in a quiet café and a strange collection of photographs draws her a true story of Spain's devastating civil war.
Seventy years earlier, the café is home to the close-knit Ramírez family. In 1936, an army coup led by General Franco tears Spain to shreds and the Ramírez clan are front and center as some of the most vicious atrocities of the war unfold before their eyes. Divided by politics and tragedy, everyone must take a side, even if it means going against your most beloved family and friends.
The Thread
Katerina Sarafoglou is a talented young seamstress who creates one-of-a-kind gowns for the wealthy elites of Thessaloniki. As a child, she had escaped to Greece when her home in Asia Minor was destroyed by the Turkish Army and she lost her mother in the ensuing chaos. She was rescued by Eugenia, a mother of two children and taken to a new home and hopeful future.
But Thessaloniki is a city that will experience decades of turbulence and troubles over the course of the 20th century: the great fire of 1917, the Nazi invasion of Greece, and the rise of the Greek resistance. Katerina’s future is one that her grandchildren will look back upon with many questions.
The Sunrise
In the summer of 1972, Famagusta in Cyprus is the most desirable resort in the whole of the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. It's a city of fortune, ambition, and glamor. An ambitious couple are about to open the island's most spectacular hotel, where Greek and Turkish Cypriots will work side by side in harmony.
Two neighboring families, the Georgious and the Özkans, are among many who moved to Famagusta to escape the years of unrest and ethnic violence that have plagued Cyprus. But beneath the city's façade are tensions that money cannot make go away. The Greek coup plunges the island into chaos and those divisions become even more fraught, forever changing the lives of those who live there. As Famagusta becomes a deserted city, only two families are left behind...
Those Who Are Loved
In the midst of the Second World War, Greece is invaded by German forces, leaving a nation already in the midst of political strife in a state of total devastation. Fifteen-year-old Themis comes from a family divided, and the Nazi occupation has only deepened those lines between her loved ones. The invasion and ensuing famine inspires her to commit acts of resistance.
In the civil war that follows the end of the occupation, Themis joins the Communist army, where she experiences the extremes of love and hatred and the paradoxes presented by a war in which Greek fights Greek. Looking back on her life, she confronts how the personal and political became impossibly intertwined for everyday Greeks like herself.
The Figurine
A Cycladic figurine is a beautiful statuette whose origins date back to the Bronze Age. They are highly sought after by academics, collectors, and looters alike. When Helena inherits her grandparents' apartment in Athens, she is overwhelmed with memories of the summers she spent there as a child. At the time, Greece was under a brutal military dictatorship, and her cruel grandfather was one of the regime's most infamous generals.
While sifting through his property, she discovers an array of valuable objects and antiquities. How did her grandfather get his hands on such beauties? Helena decides to find out, and the past reveals the dark and bloody cost of the hunt for one's history. Perhaps Helena can make amends for her family’s past.
Island
Alexis Fielding is about to make a life-changing decision, though before she does that, she wants to find out more about her beloved mother Sofia's past. But Sofia has long been silent on her youth. 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, whom she promises can offer Alexis answers. In Plaka, Alexis is shocked to hear about the nearby 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. Hers is a story of family, war, passion, and the power of their beloved home.
One August Night
August 25th, 1957. In this sequel to The Island, Spinalonga closes its leper colony after decades of pain and troubles. For Maris and Anna Petrakis, two sisters bound by love and trauma, the closure of the colony inspires many complicated feelings.
The people of Plaka must contend with the weight of history and how to resume their lives while the immense shadow of this legacy looms forever overhead. Can a bright future for the descendants of Plaka be built from these terrible ruins?
Maria's Island
Following on from The Island, Hislop wrote this children's tale, with illustrations by Gill Smith, that follows one of the young residents of the Cretan village of Plaka and the tiny, deserted island of Spinalonga.
Maria Petrakis regales readers big and small with the history of the island and its status as a former leper colony. It's a chance to understand topics as serious as shame, stigma, and illness, and how, in the end, we are bound together more by the qualities we share than the ones that make us different.
