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

Product Information

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. It 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.

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. When Helena inherits her grandparents’ apartment in Athens, she is overwhelmed with memories of the summers she spent there as a child, when Greece was under a brutal military dictatorship. Her remote, cruel grandfather was one of the regime’s generals and as she sifts through the dusty rooms, Helena discovers an array of valuable objects and antiquities. How did her grandfather amass such a trove? What human price was paid for them? Her affection for the Mediterranean then took her to Spain, and in The Return she wrote about the painful secrets of its civil war.In 2020, came the sequel to The Island, One August Night, which was adapted for Greek state television in 2022.

In 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. A delightful and original new book from multimillion-copy bestselling author Victoria Hislop, author of The Island and The Sunrise 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. Hislop’s love for Greece shines and transports readers through space and time to a brilliantly drawn world” 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.

Bookshop displays for Maria’s Island

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. 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. 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. In her third novel, The Thread, Victoria returned to Greece to tell the extraordinary and turbulent tale of Thessaloniki and its people across the 20 th century. Published in 2011 to widespread acclaim, it confirmed her reputation as an inspirational storyteller and was shortlisted for a British Book Award. The Thread is currently in development with a British TV production company. Random reading recommendation: The Story: Love, Loss & The Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories edited by @VicHislop . A rich feast.

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”.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.