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1.1 Introduction to Victoria Hislop and The Island
Victoria Hislop (1959 - ), born in Bromley, Kent (now part of London), she was raised in Tonbridge, Kent, and attended Tonbridge Grammar School. She studied English at St Hilda's College, Oxford and worked in publishing and as a journalist before becoming a novelist. With the gentle and detailed writing style and moving stories, she has gained high reputation in England and even the whole world. The Island, holding the Number One slot in the Sunday Times paperback chart for eight consecutive weeks and having sold over two million copies worldwide, tells a miserable story about Alexis’s family.
Set on the island of Spinalonga, off the coast of Crete, on the village of Plaka which lays within swimming distance across it, The Island tells the story about Alexis Fielding, a 25-year-old on the brink of a life-changing decision, that is whether to keep on the non-ideal relationship with her boyfriend and also about her career, which seems to be unmatched with herself. She longs to know about her mother and the family’s past while her mother, Sofia never talks about it. All Alexis knows is that Sofia is growing up in a small Cretan village before moving to London. Arriving at Plaka, Alexis is astonished and shocked to see that it lies a stone’s throw from the tiny, deserted island of Spinalonga, the once Greece’s leper colony. It is also there that she finds Fotini, the old friend of her mother’s, who later tells the long and tragic tale of her family. What Fotini tells her is pretty shocking and tragic; it is the story which Sofia has spent her life concealing: the story of Eleni, her grandmother, and of a family torn apart by tragedy, war and passion. Eleni has two children, Maria and Anna with her husband Georgio. She discovers how intimately she is connected with the island and with the horror and pity of the leper colony which was once there, and learns too that the secrets of the past have the power to change the future. She also gets to know the real love and makes her decision.源`自,优尔`.论"文'网[www.youerw.com
Sorry it’s end like this. You never did listen.
Without “Love Alexis” or row of kisses, she finds that there isn’t actual love between Ed and her. Everything is in the open at the end of the story, and there is no shame in any of it. All we can see is “not humiliation but heroism, not perfidy but passion, not leprosy but love”.
1.2 Introduction to Spinalonga
Originally, Spinalonga was not an island – it was part of the island of Crete. During Venetian occupation the island was carved out of the coast for defensing purposes and a fort was built there. During Venetian rule, salt was harvested from salt pans around the island. The island has also been used as a leper colony, which sets the background story of this novel.
“The island of Spinalonga, off the north coast of Crete, was Greece’s main leper colony from 1903 until 1957.”This is the first introduction to Spinalonga on the front page of the novel by the author. And from the perspective of history, we can learn from Alexis’s guidebook that:
“SPINALONGA: Dominated by a massive Venet island was seized by the Turks in the eighteenth century. The majority of Turks left Crete when it was declared autonomous in 1898 but the inhabitants refused to give up their homes and their lucrative smuggling trade on Spinalonga. They only left in 1903 when the island was turned into a leper colony. In 1941, Crete was invaded by the Germans and occupied until 1945, but the presence of lepers meant Spinalonga was left alone. Abandoned in 1957.”
The natural scenery of Spinalonga perhaps is not of much difference from Plaka. There used to be blue water and warm sea breeze, with hillsides full of wild flowers. However, the horrible existence of leprosy makes it the synonymous with taboo. As a leper colony to isolate lepers, Spinalonga is generally thought to be an untouchable place. Actually, island, as a natural landscape, itself has no specific meanings, but it is the people live on it that make it become a symbol. Due to the fact that leprosy was an incurable disease at that time, Spinalonga is given a despair meaning. On the contrary, the island of Crete, under the foil of Spinalonga, symbolizes health and vitality. With the continuous conversion of the scene between Plaka and Spinalonga, the fates of the people are agitated vigorously and full of ups and downs and both of the light and dark sides of human nature are undoubtedly revealed. Luckily, thanks to Doctor Kyritsis, at the end of the story, most of the lepers end up their lives on Spinalonga and are ferried back to Crete to live a not so common life. It seems that they have got reborn, from the disease, from Spinalonga.