The Sunrise

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It would be wrong to say I enjoyed reading about all these terrible things that people have done to each other.

The tale is narrated by Maria, one of the children in Hislop’s novel The Island, from which this engrossing yarn is skillfully adapted for younger readers.

The island writer on coming back to Lytham, writing, her new book and how maybe women should run the world.

Hislop captures well the dreamy and Edenic time before the occupation as well as the fear and chaos afterward. She said: “I feel very comfortable being a foreigner. I don’t find languages that difficult, I speak Greek, French and bits of Spanish and German. Forty years on, lawyer Maria Hadjivasili, who escaped with her family, revisits her home town with author Victoria Hislop 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.

I know for a fact that people marking that paper in our finals must have wondered why we were all saying the same thing. 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”. Heartbreaking… A fascinating insight into a part of Mediterranean history that isn’t often explored ( Essentials) Hislop's writing effectively weaves the personal into the political without ever becoming overbearing. An informative but equally emotional read." - WomanHave you ever been to Cyprus? And if so, have you ever given much thought to the cataclysmic events that took place on the island in the Summer of 1974, decimating the glamorous beach resort of Famagusta and uprooting thousands from their homes in the process?

That traumatic teenage trip left its scars: “I’ve never been camping since,” she admits, laughing merrily. “If someone tells me we’re going to sleep in a tent, forget it!” Fortunately, that dislike doesn’t extend to Cyprus itself – and in fact Cyprus is the subject of her new book The Sunrise, her fourth novel since making her name with The Island in 2005. That debut, a big hit in Britain and even bigger hit in Greece (where it became a hugely successful TV series), was set on the leprosy colony of Spinalonga, off the coast of Crete; since then she’s written The Return, set during the Spanish Civil War, and The Thread, set in Thessaloniki – and nowThe Sunrise, which takes place in Famagusta before and during the invasion. In the summer of 1972, Famagusta in Cyprus is the most desirable resort in the Mediterranean, a city bathed in the glow of good fortune. An ambitious couple are about to open the island's most spectacular hotel, where Greek and Turkish Cypriots work in harmony. Two neighbouring families, the Georgious and the OEzkans, are among many who moved to Famagusta to escape the years of unrest and ethnic violence elsewhere on the island. But beneath the city's facade of glamour and success, tension is building. It takes him about two days to go through it, and at the end of the two days he gives me a tutorial. It’s not problematic. We were at the same university doing the same degree [English] at the same time,” she says. they get swollen day by day spreading like a cancerous metastasis, infecting the island, its people. years ago, the Cypriot town of Famagusta was occupied by Turkish forces. Today it’s capturing media attention once again, as the subject of Victoria Hislop’s new novel, “The Sunrise,” which will be released in Greece on October 22.

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Maria grew up in 1960s Famagusta, then one of the most glamorous and sophisticated seaside resorts in the Mediterranean. The beach, with its famously pale sand and turquoise sea, was lined with luxury hotels that attracted millionaires and celebrities such as Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot and Paul Newman. Nearly half of the island’s hotel rooms were in the town, which was also home to Cyprus’s main port.

The title alludes to an upscale hotel the Papacostas family is building, for the summer of 1972 is a prosperous time in Famagusta, a tourist mecca on the island. Savvas and Aphroditi Papacostas are a power couple. They already own a small hotel, the Paradise Beach, but realize how lucrative a high-rise hotel and nightclub could be, so they engage in a building project to bring upscale amenities to their new property. At first all goes well, as elegant Aphroditi and her driven husband do everything they can to ensure the success of their enterprise. The nightclub is to be run by Markos Georgiou, in whom Savvas has great confidence and for whom Aphroditi has great antipathy—at least initially. When Savvas embarks on another project, however—the renovation of the Paradise Beach—Aphroditi begins to feel lonely and finds comfort in the arms of Markos. And then, in 1974, the political situation radically changes, as Turkish troops invade Cyprus. The recently installed democratic government in Greece has its own preoccupations and has neither the time nor the energy to devote to Greek Cypriots. Savvas and Aphroditi must flee Famagusta and go to the British base of Dhekelia before settling into an apartment in Nicosia owned by Aphroditi’s parents. Meanwhile, Markos and his family take refuge with some Turkish Cypriots in the now-abandoned Sunrise Hotel, and together they face an occupied and increasingly dangerous city. For me, the stars of the story were not the Papacostas or the greedy and resentful Markos but those characters who initially played a small part in the story. Following the invasion, the lives of two families were at the fore – the Özkans and the Georgious, one family being Greek Cypriots and the other Turkish Cypriots, but both connected in some way with The Sunrise hotel and it was these characters that I enjoyed reading about the most, in particular, a young worker called Hűseyin and his mother, hotel hairdresser Emine Özkan. Both families had their own fight for survival amidst the continuing bloodshed in the aftermath of the invasion.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.