The Sunrise

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The other main character is Markos Georgiou. He is the manager of the night club at The Sunrise and becomes so indispensable to Savvas that he becomes his right hand man. However Markos feels much resentment towards his employers. They have so much and take him for granted. But beneath the city’s facade of glamour and success, tension is building. When a Greek coup plunges the island into chaos, Cyprus faces a disastrous conflict. Turkey invades to protect the Turkish Cypriot minority and Famagusta is shelled. Forty thousand people seize their most precious possessions and flee from the advancing soldiers. The sand on the beach at Famagusta is fine and pale, and the sea is literally turquoise. It’s a beautiful and safe place to swim. Superficially, the beach looks the same in this picture as it would have done in the early 1970s but if you take a closer look, there is a dark strip on the skyline (on the right of the photograph). This is the barrier that divides the beach. It is a strip of plastic netting, held together with lengths of rusting barbed wire. The whole city of Famagusta is now in the area occupied by Turkey – and the huge section of it which is sealed off (and a no-go area) is known as Varosha.

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.Bestselling novelist Victoria and Private Eye editor Ian met at Oxford University, their daughter Emily graduated from the same esteemed establishment and their son William is currently studying history there.

At the end of the work, there’s a little bit of hope and optimism that results. So it was a mixture of pleasure and pain, like a lot of jobs.” Foster, Sophie (16 June 2019). "Victoria Hislop: 'Ian was in a different league to me at Oxford - he charged me 50p to borrow his essays' ". The Sunday Telegraph . Retrieved 18 June 2019. Vibrant… Hislop brings history to life in this compelling tale’ ( Tatler)Hislop brings her consummate storytelling skills to this enthralling tale of love, marriage and a community all put to the test ( Woman & Home) The sudden, horrific violence of war is on full display here, and there is one instance late in the story that changes many things for many people, revealing the true character of one person. It’s been like that for 40 years and it’s something which is still not resolved. And I think it has relevance at the moment.”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?

Hislop’s writing effectively weaves the personal into the political without ever becoming overbearing. An informative but equally emotional read ( Woman) Why did this grim-faced couple offer to drive to Cyprus? Maybe just to make some cash – but then why did they take a detour across Turkey, veering east to the plains of Anatolia where the man woke them all up one night to announce that they’d been robbed, and all their money was gone? They must’ve been delivering something, muses Victoria, green eyes dancing with amusement in her lively face, “either delivering or taking”, with herself and the others brought in as cover. A gaggle of wide-eyed young people was much less likely to attract the attention of Customs than two miserable gits in their 50s. If only that was the case. She travels through time and stops at the year 1974. There, Hislop brings to life the most horrific days of the turkish invasion and makes a noticing and rather disturbing contrast of the carefree days of potential and wealth to the absolute wretchedness that followed. The entire island is painted red by the blood of cypriots, both greeks and turkish and Cyprus is biscected. The Ozkans are on the same wrung of the ladder and have a lot in common with the Georgious, a factor that comes in handy when they're both marooned in a no-man's-land as the Turkish advance, leading to some extraordinarily tense moments and an explosive climax.Famagusta a seaside resort city thriving with tourists, with expensive shops, luxury hotels, people thirsty for money, thirsty for more. Thankfully, he didn’t have anything drastic to say about her latest novel, The Sunrise, set in the sunshine resort of Famagusta in Cyprus in 1972, where Greek and Turkish Cypriots live in harmony. It centres on an ambitious couple who open the most glitzy hotel there – The Sunrise – only for prosperity and happiness to be scuppered by the conflict between Turkey and Greece, with devastating effects on both Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities.

Needless to say, that first trip was memorable. Victoria knew about the invasion, 1974 having been “the first summer that I actually remember following current affairs; I was 14, and kind of waking up a little bit”, but she’d somehow forgotten that she was coming to a divided island – and was surprised when the van crossed from Mersin to the occupied north and she found herself in a non-place that wouldn’t even stamp her passport. The rest of the trip (she was here for two weeks) was equally disconcerting. She had very little money, the bulk of it having been stolen – or was it? – in Turkey, and mostly ate watermelon, bread and countless tomatoes that ended up making her violently ill. The tents were boiling-hot and unbearable. The girls were courted (if that’s the word) by Turkish soldiers, but Victoria felt threatened and unsafe. After all, she says, “we were English girls, and everyone makes the same assumption about English girls on holiday. And that wasn’t really my thing”. they get swollen day by day spreading like a cancerous metastasis, infecting the island, its people. Intelligent and immersive… Hislop’s incisive narrative weaves a vast array of fact through a poignant, compelling family saga ( The Sunday Times)

Famagusta not only offered daytime recreation, but also a nightlife that was second to none in the Mediterranean. It had many fine restaurants and nightclubs where visitors and locals enjoyed live music. The rich and famous went to Famagusta, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, for example, as well as other international stars. Ian is much more intellectual than I am. At university, he used to lend people his essays so they could copy them. He should have rented them out at 50p a go because it would have paid his bar bill. The island of Cyprus provides the setting for this novel of politics and romance as the action moves from the pastoral to the volatile.