The Island is the million-copy No.1 bestseller and winner of Richard & Judy's Summer Read 2006 from Victoria Hislop. From the thirties to the present day, it is a tale of four generations rent by war, illicit love, violence and leprosy.

***A beautiful 10th anniversary paperback edition that includes a new essay by Victoria Hislop on the impact of this million-copy bestseller.***

This was not the start of a short trip to deliver supplies. It was the beginning of a one-way journey to start a new life. Life on a leper colony. Life on Spinalonga.

Fifty years later, making a life-changing journey of her own, Alexis Fielding feels the pull of the abandoned island. A distant shadow off the coast of Crete, she knows it holds the secrets to her mother's past, buried for so long but surely not forgotten . . .

Acclaim for The Island:

'Passionately engaged with its subject . . . meticulously researched' The Sunday Times

'Hislop carefully evokes the lives of Cretans between the wars and during German occupation, but most commendable is her compassionate portrayal of the outcasts' Guardian

'Vivid, moving and absorbing' Observer