Summer is the perfect season to immerse yourself in a book. Victoria Hislop's Island of the Forgotten is one of those novels that takes us on a journey. It takes us directly under the Cretan sun between family history and history. Published in 2005 and 2012 in France, The Island of the Forgotten has been translated in twenty-five countries and sold more than two million copies. A real success, it has also won several awards including the British Book Awards in 2007.
Synopsis of The Island of the Forgotten
Alexis, a young Englishwoman, knows nothing about her family's history. To find out more, she goes to visit her mother's native village in Crete. She makes a terrible discovery: just opposite stands Spinalonga, the colony where lepers were sent… and where his great-grandmother would have perished. What frightening mysteries hide this island of the forgotten? Why did Alexis' mother break so violently with her past? The young woman is determined to lift the veil on the heartbreaking destiny of her ancestors and their dark secrets…
A fresco of portraits of women
The Island of the Forgotten is a fresco of portraits of women over several generations: Alexis, his mother Sophia and his great-grandmother Eleni. The story begins with Alexis Fielding, a twenty-year-old woman of English origin with a degree in archaeology. In a relationship with Ed, she is questioning her relationship and her life. At the crossroads, she feels the vital need to reconnect with her family roots in order to lift the veil on all the many secrets that hover. Indeed, despite his many questions, his mother, Sophia, never talks about his past and his Greek origins. Yet she stayed there for more than eighteen years. Despite their close-knit mother-daughter relationship, Alexis knows nothing about her maternal great-grandmother. She finds herself faced with an identity problem. How to build yourself as a woman without knowing your family history? We then discover Eleni's courage and tragic destiny. The Island of the Forgotten highlights this strong bond between these women, a blood bond that is transmitted from generation to generation.
A story carried by secrets of a family
As summer slowly draws to a close, Alexis flies to the north coast of Crete, to his mother's native village of Plaka. She carries in her luggage a letter written by her mother addressed to a certain Fotini. In the space of a few days, she finds Fotini who is about to tell her for the first time the story of her family and more particularly that of her grandmother, Eleni, her husband Giogis and her two children, Maria and Anna. The story is tragic because the family finds itself torn between war and passion. Fotini tells him the secrets of his family, thwarted love stories or devastating passions and dramas. But through this family story, Alexis discovers a much larger story.
Coming to her mother's native village, she realizes that it is located just opposite the island of Spinalonga: a colony of lepers. Family secrets are revealed, always carried by Fotini's moving story. Thus, she learns that her great-grandmother Eleni and one of her daughters have been affected by leprosy. Sophia, his mother, not only hid from him the death of her own grandmother on the island of Spinalonga, but also the reason for his exile away from Crete. Everything seems to clear up for Alexis. Through this quest for identity, Victoria Hislop stresses the importance of knowing one's origins and family history. It is thus a question of this past that is transmitted and impacts a family on future generations. An invisible link through time.
A novel at the heart of history
Victoria Hislop takes us into the past of a village, in the mid-twentieth century, in the daily life of its inhabitants, between their habits and customs. But it is also a life punctuated by suffering and drama. And what makes The Island of the Forgotten all the more poignant is that the author is inspired by real events. Fiction and history then mingle at the heart of the narrative. Thus, the writer depicts this peaceful life that begins to implode in the face of the invasion of Crete during the Second World War, between the refusal of the inhabitants to submit and the commitment of some of them in the Resistance.
Then, The Island of the Forgotten highlights the history of Spinalonga. From 1903 to 1957, Spinalonga was a colony of lepers, a terrible infectious disease, mutilating and considered incurable. When a case was detected, the person was immediately sent to the island for a one-way trip, with no hope of return. The isolation of lepers was absolutely necessary in order to protect the rest of the population. At the beginning of the twentieth century, no treatment existed and the mode of transmission was still unknown. The disease was mistakenly judged to be highly contagious. The population saw leprosy as a real curse. Lepers became plagues. Today, thanks to Victoria Hislop's novel, the island, now uninhabited, has become a tourist site, making it possible to never forget this "shameful episode" in the history of Crete.
Island of the Forgotten: anode to difference and resilience
Victoria Hislop brilliantly describes these two populations that evolve on both sides of the sea. On the one hand, there are lepers who face exile and isolation, and on the other, the unreached population whose lives are punctuated by a quiet daily life but clouded by the fear of disease. We then discover the reality of leprosy, without artifice, through the isolation that lepers lived on the island, far from their loved ones and excluded from society. The novelist accurately transcribes pain and pain, without ever falling into pathos. It also paints a portrait of a reality in chiaroscuro, because not everything is black or white.
Spinalonga then appears as a micro-society, where people affected by the disease manage to find their place. The inhabitants of the island recreate a village life, with school, grocery store, bakery, cafes, barber, hospital, pharmacy, individual houses, cinema. This alternative society appears as a real new beginning, making it possible to break with loneliness and exclusion. Thus, life continued in Spinalonga. And when World War II broke out, lepers inspired such fear that they managed to stop the German invasion.
Beyond the historical dimension, Victoria Hislop highlights the false beliefs that stemmed from leprosy. She evokes with perfect mastery exclusion and fear of difference. She also talks about the resilience Islanders have in the face of disease. Indeed, hope seems to be resisting. The hope of treatment, the hope of returning to the village, the hope of living. Alexios perceives this resilience in Fotini's story, between the courage of Eleni and her family, the constancy and kindness of Giogis, her husband, who every day brought goods on his boat. The Island of the Forgotten is therefore an ode to resilience and a magnificent and vibrant plea for difference.
And to continue your trip to Greece, find the review of the novel Circe by Madeline Miller on Justfocus.
