An evening with Victoria Hislop

We're thrilled to welcome bestselling author Victoria Hislop back to Chorleywood this autumn, where she'll be chatting about her unforgettable new novel The Wine-Dark Sea.

Greece, 1946. In the power vacuum remaining after the Second World War, a brutal civil war erupts between rival left- and right-wing factions. The conflict spirals as the country pays a bitter price in human lives and fighting soon erupts in the mountains, turning villages into battlefields and pulling ordinary women and children into the fray.

When the government soldiers come to Kalopetra, Fotini is nursing her newborn second child. She urges her daughter, Ileana, to hide with the older children as she and the other women are herded into trucks. Weeks later, soldiers return for the children . . . but they are not to be reunited with their mothers, a wholly different fate awaits them.

Fotini finds herself transported to a prison on the island of Chios, where she befriends a fellow mother, Markella, whose son Nikos is a boat-obsessed child, wise beyond his years. And when, after months of imprisonment, Fotini and Markella find themselves separated from one another - and from Nikos - Fotini vows to hunt not only for Ileana, but also Nikos, whatever it takes.