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When a Greek coup plunges the island into chaos, Cyprus faces a disastrous conflict. Excellent, in every way' Real Reader Review, In the golden city of Famagusta, Greek and Turkish Cypriots alike enjoy a life of good fortune. This is their story. com Forty thousand people seize their most precious possessions and flee from the advancing soldiers. 'This is a story of courage, brutality and fear, of loyalty and betrayal, of love and hatred, of despair and unquenchable hope. Broadway | Nyack, New York 10960 An ambitious couple are about to open the island’s most spectacular hotel, where Greek and Turkish Cypriots work in harmony.
Reviews
Stephenson Holt
Has reading this novel and visiting the island made me want to read more of Hislop’s novels – yes. I happen to know, through talking to those still living on the island, that the author’s research was thorough on both the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot side and an unbalanced view given in this novel. Life on the island was left behind to those that still live there knowing that there are not only still tensions between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots but also between Turkish Cypriots and Mainland Turks that have been offered incentives to move to the island and given homes that were earlier abandoned.
Hislop’s skill at educating you while making it enjoyable will be well known to readers of her other novels. Would I holiday in Turkey or in the illegally held north of the island – no. I could imagine someone (no spoilers) living there, unseen from below. After leaving the coach, the first hotel we saw had been bombed near the lift shaft and we were told that the lift had, years ago, been visible half way down the shaft.
Readers will be impatient to get to Vorosha, where most of the novel takes place. It is easy to imagine any of the hotels in front of you (as seen from the beach) being The Sunrise, maybe the novel wasn’t based on one particular one, I don’t know.
A beautifully contrived view of emotions and friendships, set in a complicated saga on a complicated island at a complicated moment in that island’s history. We stopped for a frappe in a wine bar where the owner proudly showed us that his bar area was in part of the old French Gothic cathedral (now a mosque) but his side room was in a domed school-room where the Koran was once learned by heart. It would appear, according to Google, that no country in the world recognises Turkey’s illegal occupation of the island, except Turkey itself.
Not the first of Hislop’s novels I’ve read and, as always, a sense of extremely accurately researched history is brought to life by interweaving a story through it. Unfortunately, the roads around the hotel area are out of bounds and cannot be visited or seen from outside.
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