Victoria talks to Jane Garvey on Woman’s Hour (BBC Radio 4) about her new book ‘Cartes Postales from Greece‘
You can listen to the chapter featuring Victoria from the Woman’s Hour podcast using the audio player here:
Otherwise, the entire episode of Woman’s Hour is available on BBC iPlayer. Click here to listen.
Victoria Hislop talks to James Naughtie and readers about her debut novel The Island, a fictional account of a real life leprosy colony, the island of Spinalonga, just off the coast of Crete. First published in 2005, The Island has now sold over a million copies.To listen to the programme on BBC iPlayer, click here
Victoria says that when she first went to Spinalonga, as a curious tourist, she had no idea that leprosy still even existed in the 20th century. She thought it had been wiped out hundreds of years ago. Even today, around 500 new cases are diagnosed every year in India and South America.
Before writing novels Victoria was a successful travel journalist. On that first visit, her initial idea had been to write a piece for one of the Sunday newspapers, but after fifteen minutes wandering around the abandoned village on the island, she decided to tell the story in fiction instead.
The resulting novel tells the story of a family beset by two cases of leprosy in the 1930s and 50s, before the cure was found. In the 1930s, Eleni, a school teacher in the village opposite the leprosy colony, catches the disease, probably from a pupil. As the pair are exiled to Spinalonga, we see how her husband and two daughters cope in her absence, one of whom will also succumb to the disease some fifteen years later.
Victoria explores the shame and stigma of the disease through these characters and their lives and love affairs in a family saga stretching to present day London.
On BBC Radio 4’s “Open Book”, Victoria talks to Mariella Frostrup about the themes and the history behind her new novel “The Thread”, about her love of Greece, sewing costumes on the set of the TV adaptation of “The Island” and about why, despite her bestselling books, she still doesn’t call herself a novelist…
This interview is also available on BBC iPlayer
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Victoria Hislop’s first novel, The Island, was an international bestseller. It was about Spinaloga, the island housing a leprosy colony off Crete. For her second novel, ‘The Return‘ she tackles another difficult subject: the Civil War which tore Spain apart during the 1930s.
Her protagonist, Sonia, travels to Granada to celebrate a friend’s birthday and to follow her new passion: dance classes. But her holiday leads to a crucial discovery about her own family history, which proves to be life-changing. Victoria Hislop joins Jenni Murray to reveal why the land of flamenco, castanets and a buried history of violence, captured her imagination.
To listen to the interview, click here.
