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Those Who Are Loved: The compelling Number One Sunday Times bestseller, 'A Must Read' Kindle Edition
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'She brings Greek history to compelling life' The Sunday Times
'Hislop has done her research and handles the great sweep of complex Greek history with skill and confidence' Daily Mail
Athens, 1941. Nazi forces occupy Greece ... and a nation falls apart. Victoria Hislop's NEW Sunday Times Number One bestseller takes you into the darker days of Greek history and, through the eyes of its extraordinary heroine, illuminates the courage it takes to live in peace.
After decades of political uncertainty, Greece is polarised between Right- and Left-wing views when the Germans invade.
Fifteen-year-old Themis comes from a family divided by these political differences. The Nazi occupation deepens the fault-lines between those she loves just as it reduces Greece to destitution. She watches friends die in the ensuing famine and is moved to commit acts of resistance.
In the civil war that follows the end of the occupation, Themis joins the Communist army, where she experiences the extremes of love and hatred and the paradoxes presented by a war in which Greek fights Greek.
Eventually imprisoned on the infamous islands of exile, Makronisos and then Trikeri, Themis encounters another prisoner whose life will entwine with her own in ways neither can foresee. And finds she must weigh her principles against her desire to escape and live.
As she looks back on her life, Themis realises how tightly the personal and political can become entangled. While some wounds heal, others deepen.
This gripping new novel from bestselling author Victoria Hislop sheds light on the complexity and trauma of Greece's past and weaves it into the epic tale of an ordinary woman compelled to live an extraordinary life.
Victoria Hislop. Discover for yourself why 10 million readers worldwide love her books...
Here's what the critics said about Those Who Are Loved:
'A searing and powerful story full of passion, showing how one woman's ideals and beliefs shape everything that she becomes. It's both a beautifully woven love story and a spellbinding, heart-breaking depiction of a country torn apart by hatred' Daily Express
'A glorious Greek setting and rich historical detail form the backdrop of this captivating and poignant story' Woman & Home
'An eye-opening and moving read' Mirror
'Anyone who reads Victoria Hislop's novels falls in love with Greece ... A moving read that sweeps you through time' S Magazine
'A wonderfully researched and beautifully written piece of historical fiction' CultureFly
Those Who Are Loved was a Sunday Times Number One bestseller in paperback for four weeks in August and September 2020.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherReview
- Publication date30 May 2019
- File size2562 KB
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Product description
About the Author
Inspired by a visit to Spinalonga, the abandoned Greek leprosy colony, Victoria Hislop wrote The Island in 2005. It became an international bestseller, has sold more than six million copies and was turned into a 26-part Greek TV series. She was named Newcomer of the Year at the British Book Awards and is now an ambassador for Lepra. Her affection for the Mediterranean then took her to Spain, and in the number one bestseller The Return she wrote about the painful secrets of its civil war. In The Thread, Victoria returned to Greece to tell the turbulent tale of Thessaloniki and its people across the twentieth century. Shortlisted for a British Book Award, it confirmed her reputation as an inspirational storyteller.
Her fourth novel, The Sunrise, about the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the enduring ghost town of Famagusta, was a Sunday Times number one bestseller. Cartes Postales from Greece, fiction illustrated with photographs, followed and was one of the biggest selling books of 2016. The poignant and powerful Those Who Are Loved was a Sunday Times number one hardback bestseller in 2019 and explores a tempestuous period of modern Greek history through the eyes of a complex and compelling heroine. Victoria's most recent novel, One August Night, returns to Crete in the long-anticipated sequel to The Island. The novel spent twelve weeks in the Top 10 hardback fiction charts.
Her books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages.
Victoria divides her time between England and Greece and in 2020, Victoria was granted honorary citizenship by the President of Greece. She was recently appointed patron of Knossos 2025, which is raising funds for a new research centre at one of Greece's most significant archaeological sites. She is also on the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.
Review
'She brings Greek history to compelling life.....there is deep historical research here, but it never bogs down her story' ― The Sunday Times
'A beautifully woven love story and a spellbinding, heart-breaking depiction of a country torn apart by hatred' ― Daily Express
'Hislop has done her research and handles the great sweep of complex Greek history with skill and confidence. She makes a touching family story out of violent and divisive times and her fans will lap this up' ― Daily Mail
'An eye-opening and moving read' ― The Mirror
'A moving read that sweeps you through time' ― S Mag
'A glorious Greek setting and rich historical detail form the backdrop of this captivating and poignant story' ― Woman & Home --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Book Description
Review
'She brings Greek history to compelling life.....there is deep historical research here, but it never bogs down her story' ― The Sunday Times
'A beautifully woven love story and a spellbinding, heart-breaking depiction of a country torn apart by hatred' ― Daily Express
'Hislop has done her research and handles the great sweep of complex Greek history with skill and confidence. She makes a touching family story out of violent and divisive times and her fans will lap this up' ― Daily Mail
'An eye-opening and moving read' ― The Mirror
'A moving read that sweeps you through time' ― S Mag
'A glorious Greek setting and rich historical detail form the backdrop of this captivating and poignant story' ― Woman & Home --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B07NF1PYVJ
- Publisher : Review (30 May 2019)
- Language : English
- File size : 2562 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 494 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 6,595 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 200 in Women's Historical Fiction
- 494 in Spiritual & Historical Fiction
- 776 in Historical Fiction (Books)
- Customer reviews:
About the author

Victoria Hislop is the international bestselling author of The Island and The Return. In the United Kingdom, she writes travel features for The Sunday Telegraph, The Mail on Sunday, House & Garden, and Woman & Home. The Island sold over a million copies in the UK and has been translated into 24 languages. Victoria’s second novel, The Return, has been published in more than a dozen languages. She lives in Kent, with her husband Ian and their two children.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 September 2020
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You actually feel you were there in Greece at that time
Some authors start their books with a character that has come into their minds; sometimes they allow a story to evolve around that character. ‘Those who are loved’ is not one of those books, and I suspect that Victoria Hislop is not one of those authors.
As with ‘The Island,’ , Ms Hislop has researched her subject very thoroughly and produced a detailed historical novel. It’s not a subject I knew much about and it was interesting, and quite shocking to realise that Greece had suffered so much.
I was less impressed with the various characters and their relationships with each other. It seemed that somehow or other, they had to fit into a history that was already on the page. This was a family of four children, whose mother had developed schizophrenia and whose father had abandoned his responsibility to them and gone to America, leaving them in the care of his mother, Kyria Koralis. The children were at loggerheads with each other from the time they were very young. I never really empathised with them, even Themis - the main protagonist, the younger of two sisters, who seemed to hate each other, in this dysfunctional family. Also, I couldn’t altogether believe in the family being so divided as at the beginning of the book. There seemed to be such dislike between them, before they were old enough to know about politics, and more than their subsequent political beliefs warranted.
The book describes a period from about 1930, with the rise of fascism, to an epilogue set in 2016, when fascisim is on the rise again. It shows Themis as a pupil at school, a rebel, joining the communist forces, and a mother trying to keep a low profile, because of her past involvement with communism.
I found the section in the middle, about 100 pages, relentless in its descriptions of the cruelty of one side against the other. There also seemed to me to be a double standard, in that what Themis did as a communist was somehow acceptable - or perhaps, more acceptable, than what the fascists did.
I felt that in some elements of authorship, Ms Hislop fell short. There were too many characters, and not much to differentiate between them. And she was inclined to be repetitive, telling us some things more than once, in case we’d forgotten. She also seemed to set up situations which had no eventual purpose. After the prologue, the story starts by implying that the children’s grandmother is interfering, and this storyline continues for about 7 or 8 pages, before fizzling out. Throughout the rest of the book, around another 450 pages, there is nothing to suggest that Kyria Koralis is anything other than a loving grandmother, struggling to care for these warring children, and doing her best to feed and clothe them during Greece’s hard times. There are other similar instances of situations which I felt didn’t come to the interesting denouement that I would have expected.
However, whatever flaws the book has, I did not feel that I wanted to abandon it before finishing its nearly 500 pages, and it is, in addition, a mammoth work of historical research. So from that point of view, I would still give it at least 3.5 stars, possibly 4.









