The Figurine: Escape to Athens and breathe in the sea air in this captivating novel

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Victoria Hislop sheds light on the complexity of Greece’s traumatic past and weaves it into the dynamic tale of a woman who is both hero and villain, and her lifelong fight for justice. The Figurine will be published on 28th September 2023 and takes as its inspiration the dubious acquisition of cultural treasures and the price people – and countries – will pay to cling on to them. If perfection exists in the form it comes from Alice Munro who proves herself worthy of her recent Nobel Prize. In “Miles City, Montana” and “Gravel”, Munro reveals the devastation caused by “all our natural, and particular, mistakes”.

As well as studying the Greek language (it is her ultimate ambition to read everything and anything without the presence of a dictionary by her side), she spends her spare time reading, swimming, playing tennis and, these days, dancing (having been a contestant in Greece’s version of “Strictly” in 2021). August 1957. The island of Spinalonga closes its leprosy colony. And a moment of violence has devastating consequences. Victoria Hislop’s collection of favourite short stories by other female writers, simply titled The Story has given me more pleasure this year than almost all the rest of my reading put together. Like a box of festive Quality Street, you can dip in and never be sure what you will encounter – it might be Virginia Woolf or Alice Munro, this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature winner. Hislop highlights some of the very best writing of the past 200 years, with topics that range far and wide, from humour to pathos, and politics to sex. Mariella FrostrupIt was this sense of the relentless power of the elements that overwhelmed me as I finished reading, and the almost callous way in which the crew were treated by the sea: “They didn’t die, they disappeared off the face of the earth.” The men may have vanished, but this book means that they will never be forgotten – and the memory of those hours when I read it remains a very sharp one.

My story is set during the period of the Junta, an army dictatorship that committed many crimes, effectively robbing people of their lives and driving others into exile. To me there seemed to be a striking parallel. Hislop expertly delves into the complex history of a fascinating country in this beautifully written family saga’ The book is part of a two-book deal made in 2018 for UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada. Mari Evans, m.d., acquired from Jonathan Lloyd at Curtis Brown. Those Who Are Loved, published in 2019, tells the story of Greece’s traumatic period of occupation and civil war during the 20 th century. Hislop added: “I have been down a long and exciting path to write The Figurine. I had admired the beauty of the Cycladic figurine for so many years and began to understand what a huge influence they had on 20th century art. I also began to realise that their beauty has an irresistible and seductive power and wanted to write about the crime that such beauty and antiquity can drive people to.Themis is part of a family bitterly divided by politics and, as a young woman, her fury with those who have collaborated with the Nazis, drives her to fight for the communists. She is eventually imprisoned on the notorious islands of exile, Makronisos and Trikeri, and has to make a life or death decision. She is proud of having fought, but for the rest of her life is haunted by some of her actions. Forty years after the end of the civil war, she finally achieves catharsis. In 2020, came the sequel to The Island, One August Night, which was adapted for Greek state television in 2022. The idea came out of a conversation with some school teachers in Crete.” said Victoria “They commented that there were so many themes in the story that were as relevant to children as to adults but felt that the original novel was a little too grown-up for many of them. I realised that much of the book is actually about children and their experiences of stigma and loss, so this has been a wonderful experience for me, to look at things through their eyes. Writing for children requires a whole different set of skills and I hope they will enjoy reading it.”

Hislop’s love for Greece shines and transports readers through space and time to a brilliantly drawn world” The tale is narrated by Maria, one of the children in Hislop’s novel The Island, from which this engrossing yarn is skillfully adapted for younger readers. A delightful and original new book from multimillion-copy bestselling author Victoria Hislop, author of The Island and The Sunrise On a night in late October, with a howling gale outside, I sat down to read this book. Only when I closed it did I realise that the date on which the events took place exactly matched the date on which I was reading it. It was Halloween. The rest of the family was in the other room watching the television, but I decided to stay reading by our old metal stove that was useless for cooking, but good for “hugging” on cold nights. It seemed to me that this book was meant to be read on such a night: it was “The Perfect Book”. Jules, Rebecca, Rachel and Emma chat with Victoria Hislop about her latest book, The Figurine. We also talk about Greece, archaeology, Strictly Come Dancing and book recommendations ... Read the full articleIn 1998 we had just brought a crumbling 14th-century house in Kent. It is largely constructed from timber, recycled from old sailing boats and brought up from the Kent coast. In a high wind, it creaks just like a ship and in a storm everything rattles and sways. There are no foundations, just a timber base on which the house rests; this expands and contracts, allowing for the natural movements of the earth. 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. This cookie is stored by WPML WordPress plugin. The purpose of the cookie is to store the redirected language. Helena’s desire to find answers about her heritage dovetails with a growing curiosity for archaeology, ignited by a summer spent with volunteers on a dig on an Aegean island. Their finds fuel her determination to protect the precious fragments recovered from the baked earth – and to understand the origins of her grandfather’s collection.