Stories set in GREECE

1st August 2016

Cartes Postales by Victoria Hislop, stories set in Greece.

A sneak preview of what the reader might expect from Victoria Hislop’s new book “Cartes Postales” out on 22 September 2016.

Ellie is living up in North London where life and work are pretty humdrum but many of her days are brightened when week in, week out postcards pop through her letterbox, addressed not to her but to S Ibbotson, and signed “A”. Colourful and varied they chart one person’s progress through the Greek Islands, and they just keep coming. Ellie builds a montage of the bright and colourful images, a tantalising glimpse of the vast and varied beauty of the country. Tempted to visit, she finds herself boarding a plane to Athens but just just as she departs, a journal arrives detailing the Greek odyssey of the sender of the eponymous postcards.

More stories follow on from the first, set all around the islands and at different time periods – one tale is of two brothers who are pitched against each other in modern day gladiatorial fashion, each has to build up a hotel and whichever is most successful will inherit their father’s hotel conglomerate. But things do not go smoothly – the story sets the scene for the boom in tourism in the latter half of the 20th Century. Or the salutary story of Pelagia, innocently sweeping and cleaning in her local church, unaware of the effect she has on the (male) congregation.

A story about Vyronas – the poet Byron – who also ended up in the country and died in Missolonghi in 1824, leaving a town that “will always be in mourning for its past”….

And throughout are beautiful images and postcards of all things Greek.

An eclectic set of stories that celebrate the colour and passion that is Greece, upbeat, sad, wry, didactic, and charming, an ode to the country and its people. “A real amuse-bouche for the pleasures to be found in Greece“.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

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