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R E A D I N G

G R O U P

G U I D E

THE THREAD
by

Victoria Hislop
It is 2007 and carefree student Mitsos is on the way to visit his grandparents, Dimitri and Katerina. Though fond of them, he has grown up in London and knows very little about their past, and has no knowledge of Thessalonikis troubled history and of his grandparents deep, entangled roots there. The time has come, they decide, for him to be told

Ninety years earlier and Thessaloniki is a thriving city of trade, commerce and dazzling cultural variety, recently ceded from the Ottoman Empire and equally populated by Christians, Muslims and Jews. It is a hot day in August 1917 and in one of the towns smarter waterfront mansions Olga Komninos, the beautiful wife of an overbearing and ambitious textile baron, Konstantinos, finally bears her husband the child she has longed for a son, Dimitri. On the same day a fire breaks out elsewhere in Thessaloniki and engulfs great swathes of the old town; it is the first of many catastrophic events that will change this city forever, as war, fear and persecution begin to divide its people. Five years later and 450 kilometres away, Katerina Sarafoglou is hurried towards the harbour in her hometown of Smyrna in Asia Minor amid the turmoil of the GrecoTurkish war. The fearsome Turkish cavalry approaches and her mother, Zenia, is desperate to escape with her young daughter and baby. But amid the clamour and artillery fire, the small family is separated and Katerina is left on the quay alone. It is the last, generous act of a Greek soldier, Leonidas, that sees her safely aboard a ship and into the caring arms of Eugenia and her twin daughters, another family fleeing from the murderous Turkish army. Katerina eventually reaches Thessaloniki and for some years lives in the same street as Dimitri Komninos. They both grow up amid the turmoil of twentieth-century Thessaloniki as it is battered by war, occupation, civil conflict and natural disaster and eventually take on the great responsibility of caring for the treasures and memories of other loved ones who have been forced to flee. As his grandparents finish telling their story, young Mitsos questions what it means to belong and realises what his grandparents story must mean for him.

FOR DISCUSSION
Why do you think Victoria Hislop decided to bookend The Thread with her prologue and epilogue? What does the story of Mitsos contribute to the novel? Does it matter that the prologue to some extent reveals the novels outcome for Katerina and Dimitri? This place is crowded with the past, teeming with people and they are as real as you (p.8). What did you make of Pavlos vision of Thessaloniki? How does it relate to Victoria Hislops depiction of the city and the sense of both history and timelessness (p.8) that she describes? Dimitri soon realised that his father did not live by any definable ideology (p.182). What does Konstantinos believe in and what rules does he live by? What other sorts of political and spiritual belief systems are represented in the novel? How do they affect the lives of those that adhere to them? Are ideologies a good or bad thing for individuals and for society? His wife had always been a perfect model for everything he wanted to display (p.21). Consider the various romantic relationships in The Thread, and the personal and cultural motivations for embarking on them. Does the novel present a cynical view of love? Consider how Victoria Hislop weaves historical detail into the novels plot. How does she layer fictional stories on to the turbulent events of the twentieth century in Greece? How does the factual background of the plot enhance the power of the novel, and what in particular stood out for you? Many still did not regard Sephardic Jews as true Greeks, but here was Elias more than willing to risk his life to liberate his patrida (p.238). Why does Elias feel this loyalty to Greece and how is it repaid? What does the novel have to say about national and other identities, and the importance of home? Kyrios Morenos blind faith in those who guided his life was unwavering. He believed in good sense and was quite certain that at the heart of this new directive, there would be some (p.256).Why does Saul have such faith? Is he nave to believe the best of those in charge? What does The Thread have to say about authority generally? Whatever crimes the Greeks had committed, the Turks were intent on exacting revenge a hundred-fold (p.73). Sometimes, [Dimitri and Elias] were heavy handed in their actions, but if it meant that their countrymen were fed, they believed that these were justified (p.237). The more terror and humiliation [the crowd] witnessed, the louder they cheered (p.251). Does war change people or just provide them with an opportunity to reveal their true selves? What picture does The Thread paint of human nature in times of hardship? Is it a bleak depiction?

FOR DISCUSSION
Consider the various characters relationships with thread, be it intricate embroidery, rolls of traded khaki or ancient religious relics. How does thread connect them, and what does it reveal about each character? What does Irini Street represent, and how does it relate to the wider action of the novel? What about Niki Street? Is it significant that both streets are destroyed by an earthquake at the end of the novel? Why might Victoria Hislop have chosen this fate for them? Why does Katerina marry Grigoris Gourgouris? Did you understand her motivation? What means do the novels female characters have at their disposal for exerting control over their lives? How does this differ from the male characters? Katerina no longer knew which of these two women was really her mother: the woman who had been reading to her or the woman who had been writing to her (p.146). Were you surprised that Katerina gave up her search for Zenia? Who is her real mother? The Independent notes Victoria Hislops ambition to open the eyes and tug the heartstrings. To what extent is she successful in these aims in The Thread? Did you learn much from the book, and did its factual foundations contribute to its emotional impact? If you have read either of Victoria Hislops other novels, how did this one compare?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Victoria Hislop was born in Kent and grew up in Tonbridge. She read English at St Hildas College, Oxford, and later worked in book publishing and then in public relations. When she became a mother in 1990, it was the catalyst for a change of career and she began working as a freelance journalist, specialising in celebrity interviews and features on parenting and education. When one of the magazines she was writing for asked her to do a piece on Australia, she branched into travel journalism and has since been to every continent. She has written on everything from white-water rafting on the Colorado River, horse-trekking across the Andes, elephant-riding in India and climbing the Great Wall of China, to buying lingerie in Paris, shoes in Florence and couture in Rome. A trip to the former leper colony of Spinalonga in Crete resulted in her first novel, The Island, which was published in 2006 and sold over a million copies in the UK. It has been translated into twenty-five languages and has been a bestseller in many countries including Greece, Israel, Norway and even China. Passing up on offers from Hollywood studies, Victoria sold rights for the book to Greek television and the resulting twenty-six-part series has been the most successful television event in Greek history, achieving a 70% share of the audience. Victorias second novel, The Return, set during the Spanish Civil War was also an international bestseller. A collection of her short stories, One Cretan Evening, is available as an ebook.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
THE GREAT FIRE OF THESSALONIKI, 1917 At 3pm on 18 August 1917, a small kitchen fire broke out in the Mevlane district of Thessaloniki, just north of the old centre. Strong winds and a reluctance to divert water from nearby military camps meant that it soon took hold and spread. By the end of the following day it had destroyed a third of Greeces second-largest city, about one million square metres, engulfing 9,500 houses, 4,000 shops, several banks and their deposits, the town hall, the entire commercial district, three churches, twelve mosques, sixteen synagogues, and the seat of the chief rabbi with all its archive. Having burned for thirty-two hours, the fire left approximately 73,000 people homeless (52,000 Jews, 10,000 Orthodox Christians and 11,000 Muslims) and 70% of the population unemployed. The Greek government, aided by the estimated 100,000 Allied troops stationed in Thessaloniki, was quick to respond to the immediate needs of its people, establishing refugee camps and temporary housing and distributing food. But the prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, was adamant that the formal rebuilding of Thessaloniki would be controlled, and planned to replace the chaotic, Ottoman-influenced old town with a modern and distinctly European plan of regular blocks and broad boulevards overseen by the French architect Ernest Hbrard. As the face of Thessaloniki changed in the wake of the fire, so did its people: many Muslims returned to Turkey and Bulgaria and half of the citys Jewish population emigrated, mainly to Western Europe, the United States and the newly created state of Palestine. THE JEWS OF THESSALONIKI The first record of Jews in Thessaloniki dates back to 52AD, but it was in 1492 that significant numbers of Sephardic Jews (broadly meaning those from the Iberian Peninsula, todays Spain and Portugal) made the city their home following their expulsion from Spain. Jews had lived in Iberia since Roman times and had thrived under the regions Muslim Moorish rulers. But times were changing and Islamic Iberia was systematically being reclaimed for Christendom by its new Catholic Monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand. The pair had made their suspicions of their Jewish subjects clear in the brutal Inquisition of the 1480s, but in 1492 they issued a decree forcing Jews either to convert to Christianity or to leave Spain. Offered protection by the Ottoman Empire, Jews flocked to its major urban centres including Thessaloniki to the extent that by 1519 they represented 56% of the citys population, rising to 68% in 1613 and earning the city the nickname la madre de Israel, the mother of Israel.

Over the next three centuries the Jews of Thessaloniki participated in all areas of economic life from the wool trade to shipping, representing all social classes from merchants to fishermen and factory workers. But in 1912 Thessaloniki was returned to Greece and the Jewish majority began to decline as Greeks of other faiths swelled the citys population and the Great Fire of 1917 as well as a ripple of anti-Semitism forced Jewish families out for the first time in generations. By the outbreak of World War Two Jews accounted for just 40% of the population; by the end of that war almost the entire Jewish community some 60,000 people had been deported and subsequently exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps.

IDEAS FOR FURTHER STUDY


Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews by Mark Mazower Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islams City of Tolerance by Giles Milton Concise History of Greece by Richard Clogg Hellas by Nikolaos Gatzogiannis Remember Greece by Dilys Powell The Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller Twice a Stranger by Bruce Clark Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe by Renee Hirshon Christ Recrucified by Kazantzakis Motherland by Dmetri Kakmi Farewell Anatolia by Dido Sotiriou The Jewish Community of Salonika by Bea Lewcowicz The Origins of the Greek Civil War by D. Close Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition by Rafael Sabatini The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience by J. Gerber

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www.victoriahislop.com

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