Summer is ending in Plaka, a village on the north coast of Crete. Alexis, a young Englishwoman with a degree in archaeology, has chosen to go there because it's where her mother was born and lived until she was eighteen. A terrible discovery awaits Alexis, who knows nothing about her family history: from 1903 to 1957, Spinalonga, the island opposite Plaka, which looks so much like a languid animal lying on its back, was a leper colony... and her great-grandmother is said to have perished there. What frightening mysteries does this island, overlooked by the ruins of a Venetian fortress, conceal? Why did Alexis's mother, Sophia, break so violently with her past? The young woman is determined to lift the veil on the heartbreaking destiny of her ancestors and their dark secrets... A moving plea against exclusion, The Island of the Forgotten , translated into twenty-five countries and sold over two million copies, has conquered the entire world.