- Published: 03/05/2012
- ISBN: 9781847082749
- 129x20mm
- 272 pages
To the Island
Meaghan Delahunt
He disappeared. That’s all she really knew.
In search of her father Andreas, whom she has never met, Lena travels with her small son from Australia to Greece. On the island of Naxos she finds him, a wary, tormented man living in self-imposed exile and haunted by what happened to him under the rule of the Colonels in the 1960s. Slowly Lena unlocks the secrets of her father’s past, and in getting to know him begins to understand the dark realities of contemporary Greek history.
To the Island is a book about the impact of larger political events on the lives of ordinary people, and how political and personal betrayals reverberate across generations, beautifully evoking the currents and cross-currents between individuals, within families and in broader society. And in Lena and Andreas’s stories, it shows how difficult it is to confront our personal and collective pasts – and the terrible consequences of being unable to do so.
£7.99
A powerful novel ... There is a meditative, painterly quality to this novel, which reflects the way Delahunt, a practicing Buddhist writes and thinks ... In places this novel is beautiful. Her evocation of Greece is so vivid it comes as no surprise to discover her love for the country
Rosemary Goring, Herald
A novel with shades of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, in which the dark secrets of the past stand in sharp contrast to the brightness of the sun
Giles Foden, Conde Nast Traveller
This is a novel of quietly intense physicality...Meaghan Delahunt explores the labyrinths of the human heart in a long awaited third novel
Susan Mansfield, Scotland on Sunday
From the Same Author
The Red Book
Meaghan Delahunt
Françoise, an Australian photographer, travels to Bhopal in India, where twenty years earlier a gas leak killed thousands. There she meets Naga, a Tibetan refugee whose family died in the disaster, and Arkay, a Scottish traveller battling addiction who has found solace in Buddhism. As a testament to their time together Françoise assembles photographs from their lives into an album, the Red Book. The photographs tell their stories of love, struggle and transformation – pointing to the people they have been and who they will become.
Meaghan Delahunt on Granta.com
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
Letter from Greece
Meaghan Delahunt
‘The only thing between Greece and total collapse is the Greek family.’