One August Night

The island of Spinalonga, off the coast of Crete, has been empty since the last leper colony in Europe was closed in 1957. The families of Plaka — the village that looks across the water to the island — have spent decades rebuilding lives touched by the colony: some directly, through relatives who lived and died there; others indirectly, through the shame and silence that surrounded the disease.

Fifty years on from the events of The Island, one August night a violent act brings old histories back to the surface. The families whose stories were told in the first novel — the Petrakis family, those who went to Spinalonga and those who didn’t — must face what was never fully resolved, in a narrative that is quieter and more intimate than The Island but no less committed to the specific quality of Cretan life and landscape.

One August Night is a companion piece rather than a full sequel — it assumes knowledge of The Island and rewards readers who have that foundation. For anyone who found themselves moved by the original, returning to Spinalonga and the families of Plaka is genuinely satisfying.

Reading Guides

• Victoria Hislop Books in Order
• Where to Start with Victoria Hislop
• Books About Greece

What Distinguishes This Book

Among the qualities that set One August Night apart: Returning to Spinalonga and the characters of The Island is deeply satisfying; The Cretan setting retains all its power from the original; and A more intimate and personal novel than its predecessor. These strengths are evident from the first pages and sustain across the whole work.

Themes

The thematic concerns of One August Night give it weight beyond its surface narrative. How communities carry unresolved trauma across generations. Spinalonga as a place that continues to exert power over those connected to it. Hislop returning to her most beloved world with earned confidence. These ideas emerge from the texture of the work rather than explicit statement, which is the mark of ambitious fiction done well.

The Writing

Victoria Hislop’s prose in One August Night is the vehicle through which the book’s ideas travel. The style is calibrated to the subject — neither more ornate nor more stripped-down than the material requires. This kind of precision is less common than it appears, and it is one of the reasons the book repays re-reading: there is more in each page than a single pass recovers.

Limitations

Works best as a companion to The Island rather than a standalone. Some readers find the sequel structure somewhat slight. These are worth knowing before starting, though they are unlikely to diminish the experience for the readers the book is written for.

Who This Is For

Readers who loved The Island; visitors to Crete and Spinalonga

Returning to Spinalonga

The decision to return to Spinalonga — to the families of Plaka, to the island itself — after the extraordinary success of The Island carried obvious risks. The original novel was a phenomenon: over a million copies sold in the UK alone, a Greek television adaptation that drew half the population of Greece each week, and a readership that had formed a deep emotional attachment to the Petrakis family and the world Hislop created around them. Any sequel would be measured against that response.

One August Night meets this challenge by not trying to replicate The Island but to exist in its aftermath. It is a quieter, more interior book — less concerned with the sweep of historical events and more focused on what communities and families carry from generation to generation when the original trauma has never been fully addressed. The violence that triggers the novel’s present-day narrative is deliberately understated; its significance comes from what it resurfaces.

Spinalonga After 1957

The leper colony on Spinalonga was closed in 1957 when the last patients were transferred to hospitals on the mainland. What they left behind — the village they had built, the church, the houses, the evidence of a life lived on the island — was preserved by the absence of development, and Spinalonga became a historical site visited by the tourists who began arriving in Crete in increasing numbers from the 1960s onward. For the families of Plaka, who had lived opposite the island through all the colony years, the island’s transformation from place of confinement to tourist attraction involved a complex renegotiation of what the place meant and what had happened there.

Hislop’s novel engages with this renegotiation directly. The violence of one August night — fifty years after the events of The Island — forces characters who have built their lives around a certain silence to confront what was never said, in a narrative that insists on the costs of incompleteness.

The Novel as Companion

One August Night works best understood as what Hislop has called it: a companion piece. It assumes knowledge of the original and rewards it. Readers who come to it without that foundation will find it moving but somewhat opaque; those who bring the emotional history of The Island to it will find it genuinely illuminating — a meditation on what survives and what does not, set in the same landscape that made the first novel one of the most beloved British novels of the 2000s.

Final Verdict

Our rating: 3.9/5 — A worthy companion to The Island — quieter and more reflective, but returning to Spinalonga and Crete with the emotional accuracy that made the first novel so powerful.