The Thread
Victoria Hislop, 2012
HarperCollins
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062135582
Summary
From the internationally acclaimed author of The Island and The Return comes a sweeping and unforgettable story of love and friendship and the choices that must be made when loyalties are challenged.
Thessaloniki, Greece, 1917: As Dimitri Komninos is born, a fire sweeps through the thriving multicultural city where Christians, Jews, and Muslims live side by side. It is the first of many catastrophic events that will forever change this place and its people.
Five years later, as the Turkish army pushes west through Asia Minor, young Katerina loses her mother in the crowd of refugees clambering for boats to Greece. Landing in Thessaloniki's harbor, she is at the mercy of strangers in an unknown city. For the next eighty years, the lives of Dimitri and Katerina will be entwined with each other and—through Nazi occupation, civil war, persecution, and economic collapse—with the story of their homeland.
Thessaloniki, Greece, 2007: A young Anglo-Greek hears his grandparents' remarkable story for the first time and understands he has a decision to make. For decades, Dimitri and Katerina have looked after the treasures of those who have been forced from their beloved city. Should he stay and become their new custodian? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1959
• Where—Bromley, Kent, England, UK
• Raised—Tonbridge, England
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Currently—lives in Sissinghurst, England
Victoria Hislop writes travel features for The Sunday Telegraph and The Mail on Sunday, along with celebrity profiles for Woman & Home. She lives in Kent, England, with her husband and their two children. (From the publisher.)
More
Born in Bromley (Kent), Victoria Hislop (nee Hamson) grew up in Tonbridge. She read English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, and worked in publishing and as a journalist before becoming an author.
In 1988 she married Private Eye editor Ian Hislop in Oxford. They have two children, Emily Helen and William David, and live in Sissinghurst.
Hislop's first novel, The Island (2005), which the Sunday Express hailed as "the new Captain Corelli's Mandolin" was a Number 1 Bestseller in the UK, selling more than 1 million copies. According to her website, she rejected a Hollywood film offer (worth £300,000) for the novel. Instead, she offered the rights to Mega, a Greek television channel, for a fraction of the fee. Her desire was "to preserve the integrity of the book and to give something back to the Mediterranean island on which it is based."
The Return, her second novel, a sequel set in Spain, has also been a success and was followed by The Thread in 2012.
In 2009, she donated the short story "Aflame in Athens" to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project—four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the Fire collection. ("More" adapted from Wikipedia and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
A brilliant page turner and destined to become a reading group staple, The Thread is rich with drama and historical detail.
Glamour (UK)
Hislop’s vivid storytelling makes a fascinating, turbulent place and time spring to life.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
When Turkish troops force the people of Smyrna from their homes in 1922, a young girl named Katerina becomes separated from her mother amid the chaos. Taken in by a fellow refugee with two daughters of her own, Katerina and her surrogate family make a new life together in the Greek city of Thessaloniki. Katerina soon meets Dimitri, the young son of a wealthy businessman, who is living nearby while his mother remodels their mansion on the sea. The novel takes place over the course of their lifetimes, and tracks the crossing of their paths as they struggle to survive and nurture a love indifferent to dogma and national conflict in a city beleaguered by political, social, and emotional turbulence, including Nazi occupation, Communist backlash, civil war, and poverty. . Hislop (The Island) is a clever storyteller who deftly manages to flesh out Katerina and Dimitri’s personal lives, while never abandoning the collective for the sake of the individual—20th-century Greece and her citizens are brought vividly to life. Striking an excellent balance between historicity and impassioned drama, Hislop’s newest should not be missed.
Publishers Weekly
Combining a keen eye for detail with her usual fluid writing style, Hislop presents an engrossing excursion to Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest metropolis.... This fastmoving, touching saga about tragedy, recovery, and the real meaning of family is full of dramatic incidents demonstrating their city’s transformation and resilience.
Booklist
Hislop writes in rich, vivid detail about the city by the sea, bringing its diverse population to life.... Sweeping in scope yet intimate in detail, The Thread is a love letter to Greece and a testament to the courage and adaptability of its people.
Shelf Awareness
Discussion Questions
1. What enables Eugenia and Katerina to survive in Thessaloniki after the burning of Smyrna?
2. How is the Greece Communist party portrayed in The Thread? To what extent does this differ from any prior knowledge about the party that you may have had?
3. In what ways is threading prominent throughout the novel? How does threading become important during the political crisis?
4. How are class and cultural distinctions portrayed? How do the people of Greece regard these differences and how do their attitudes change?
5. How is family represented in The Thread? How does the political situation challenge and shape these family structures?
6. How do Katerina and Dimitri's lives intertwine throughout the novel and how do their initial encounters shape their relationship?
7. Why is Olga Kominos unable to leave her home and how does her agoraphobia develop?
8. How does the country of Greece change both politically and economically throughout The Thread? To what extent does this differ from any prior knowledge about Greece's history that you may have had?
9. Compare the different marriages depicted. What were the various incentives for marriage? How were women treated during marriage? What were the expectations of a wife? How did the political situation effect women and did women have any power over political outcomes?
10. How does the ending of the novel echo its themes and motifs? What type of future does this ending represent?
(Questions issued by publisher.)