Τρίτη 9 Δεκεμβρίου 2014

Victoria Hislop’s “second golden goose” for Kensington? “ Sunrise” vs “ Bloody Truth”

In her latest exploration using the Mediterranean and its islands Victoria Hislop discovered Cyprus ! 

 In a misguided book full of historical distortions and inaccuracies under the ironic title “ Sunrise ” consciously or unconsciously she handed the Turks an addition to their propaganda.  I lost count of the negative critiques already published in the Greek press in Cyprus , in London  and on websites.

Alison Roberts’ article in the Evening Standard on 12 November 2012 titled “ Victoria Hislop: the Greek gift that keeps on giving” is an eye opener.  It seems Hislop never had it so good in using Greece . “… The Hislops bought a four-bedroom terrace in Kensington for a reported £4 million…This is a house, after all, that was surely bought with the proceeds of Victoria’s enormously popular Hellenic novels”.

If she can do it with Greece why not with Cyprus e?? There is so much potential in exploiting the Cyprus tragedy!!! And no better time than the present with a novel of a supposedly human story of compassion! Afterall “Victoria Hislop has started to appreciate the relative honesty of British politicians” wrote Alison Roberts. 

Roberts in her November 2012 article wrote that Hislop’s next novel was to be set in Greece .  No mention of Cyprus and the forthcoming “ Sunrise ”. Indicative perhaps of how rushed up a job the book was?  Just at the time “honest politicians” are seeking a quick fix for the Cyprus problem? With a Greek Cypriot mayor ready to oblige concurred to the publication of the book turning a blind eye to the historical misrepresentations in the false belief that a book…  would persuade the people to accept  a wrong solution to the Cyprus problem?

If Victoria and her researchers and or advisers genuinely wanted to write a novel using the Cyprus tragedy at least they ought to have based it on factual historical events, believed less in the “honesty” of politicians and cared more for the truth. They should have researched into the British Archives to learn that the partition of Cyprus with a racist Bizonal Bicommunal Federation was drafted in the Foreign Office in London in secret negotiations with Turkey that began back in 1955…  As the Evening Standard put it in a Leader on 15 August 1996:
 “… Britain has long historical connections with Cyprus , in not all of which, admittedly, we were covered with honour. Moreover, the partition solution-the familiar British “divide-and-quit” approach to solving tribal tensions in former colonies-has the disadvantage of entrenching and institutionalising ethnic division, and endowing it with a rancorous territorial dimension…”

In 1993, in her report analysis to the Government of Cyprus, of the then proposed by the UN Secretariat Confidence Building Measures Ms Claire Palley,  the distinguished British Oxfordian Constitutionalist expert wrote : “ … in order to get return of a desert to which its owners are entitled, all other Greek Cypriot refugees are in practice being sacrificed – what used to be called “Famagustization  of the Cyprus problem”.

Cyprus in 1974 underwent a brutal and barbaric Turkish invasion and an ethnic cleansing of 200,000 Greek Cypriots. Thousands were murdered in the process, 1619 missing, well over 180,000 Turkish Anatolians imported in the occupied to alter the demographic character of the area (a war crime), 550 Churches and religious places desecrated, precious artefacts and priceless icons smuggled and sold in the black market, 800 and more Greek Cypriot women raped and half of the Republic of Cyprus is still under Turkish occupation with the presence of a 40,000 strong Turkish army.

Victoria Hislop’s book constitutes a despicable distortion of historical facts. The Cyprus tragedy is not offered for money making best-sellers or for altering the historical sequence of events novel or no novel. We counter her “ Sunrise ” with  “Bloody Truth”. No  “ Sunrise ” can shade the bloody truth of our tragedy.




Fanoulla Argyrou
Researcher/Journalist/Author
London
8.12.2014

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