The Return: The 'captivating and deeply moving' Number One bestseller

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Incidentally, that critic might have added that The Island is also a book “with brains”, for Hislop’s books are for thinking sun-worshippers, even if they do include those blockbuster staples: adultery, murder, love and passion triumphing against great odds. When she meets with Fotini, Alexis learns the shocking truth about her great-grandmother Eleni and her daughters, in a story of misfortune, war and love. Fotini's narrative then begins with Eleni, Alexis's great-grandmother, exiled to the island of Spinalonga when she is found to be leprous.

I think if you cut the beginning and end of the book, it would actually have made a more satisfying novel. By chance, she also meets an elderly cafe proprietor, who recounts – in a riveting third-person narrative that makes up the best part of the novel – the story of the death of the great Spanish poet, Lorca, and of the Ramirez family. As Dimitri Komninos is born, a fire sweeps through the thriving multicultural city, where Christians, Jews and Moslems live side by side.

Richard's quest to learn more about Lorca leads him to explore the Spanish concept of ‘duende’, a form of heightened emotion. The poor were wonderful people with tonnes of friends and the rich only cared about money and were ultimately miserable and alone.

When Helena inherits her grandparents' apartment in Athens, she is overwhelmed by memories of childhood summers when Greece was under a brutal military dictatorship. Hislop's heroes are trying to survive - not always with success - through all these difficult times. Her life is intertwined with the widow who "adopts" and raises her, the wealthy Greek woman who lives temporarily in the humble Greek neighborhood in Thessalonika, and Moreno Jewish neighbors. You think of is as a biblical or medieval disease but I had not realised that even a control/cure wasn't found until the mid 20th century. readers can’t fail to be swept up in her ongoing love affair with all things Greek and, in The Figurine, the focus turns to the country’s ancient statuettes and the looting trade that surrounds them.

Similarly I couldn't believe that Sofia was not aware of who her parents really were, didn't she have contact with her grandparents and aunts? From the stunning streets of Athens to the picturesque villages of Greece, Victoria brings to life a huge array of characters, from a lonely clergyman to fighting brothers, an unwelcomed stranger to a groom haunted by music and a recollection of old events. Alas, Anna's husband discovers Anna's affair and kills her, and Maria, who has now found true love, feels she must sacrifice herself to care for their father.

The female characters were also very interesting to me, because they were particularly strong and complex. Katerina Sarafoglou, a young seamstress with exceptional talent, creates beautiful gowns for the rich ladies of Thessaloniki in Greece, the passion for her work shining through as her needle threads its way through the fine silks and wools. I really don’t know why I annoyed him as I worked very hard at school and tried to make him proud of me. Of course that made me even more interested as I am sure he has a family story to tell,” she says, pointing out that, as holidaymakers, many of us might even have been lying by the sea in Benidorm, say, while elsewhere, people were still being executed in the mid-1970s. A key location in Victoria’s book THOSE WHO ARE LOVED is Makronisos – a deserted island in the Aegean that was once the site of a political prison from the 1940s to the 1970s.I do not know the area described in the book at all well, my friends live nearer Rethymno, but I have flown in over Spinalonga many times and was aware of its history. My wife had bought me a copy for Christmas, and I had put it under the bed, dismissing it as a middle class British woman's attempt to imagine a subject she can't possibly know that well.

The unusual idea of writing about a leper colony was the book's one redeeming feature in my opinion, but if that appeals to you, read Moloka'i instead -- it wasn't amazing, but it was way better than 474 pages of "You must pay the rent!Aqui além de toda a estória envolvente na A Ilha, apercebemo-nos de uma problemática relativamente recente e infelizmente, ainda ativa em diversos países do nosso planeta.