Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières

It was also shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year.

His fourth novel, Corelli's Mandolin, was published in the following year, winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Best Book). In 1993, he was selected as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists 2' promotion in Granta magazine. He also taught English in Colombia, an experience which determined the style and setting of his first three novels, The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (1990), Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (1991) and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992), each of which was heavily influenced by South American literature, particularly 'magic realism'. After graduating from the Victoria University of Manchester, he took a postgraduate certificate in Education at Leicester Polytechnic and obtained his MA at the University of London.īefore writing full-time, he held many varied jobs including landscape gardener, motorcycle messenger and car mechanic. He joined the army at 18 but left after spending four months at Sandhurst. Novelist Louis de Bernières was born in London in 1954. And in the town he left behind, we see how the twin scourges of fanatical religion and nationalism unleashed by the war quickly, and irreversibly, destroy the fabric of centuries-old peace. But Birds Without Wings is also the story of Mustafa Kemal, whose military genius will lead him to victory against the invading Western European forces of the Great War and a reshaping of the whole region.' When the young men of the town are conscripted, we follow Karatavuk to Gallipoli, where the intimate brutality of battle robs him of all innocence. And there is Philothei, the Christian girl of legendary beauty, courted from infancy by Ibrahim the goatherd - a great love that culminates in tragedy and madness. There is a man known as 'the Dog' because of his hideous aspect, who lives among the Lycian tombs and another known as 'the Blasphemer,' who wanders the town cursing God and all of his representatives of all faiths. There are Father Kristoforos and Abdulhamid Hodja, holy men of different faiths who greet each other as 'Infidel Efendi' Rustem Bey, the landlord and protector of the town, whose wife is stoned for the sin of adultery. There is Iskander, the potter and local font of proverbial wisdom Karatavuk - Iskander's son - and Mehmetcik, childhood friends whose playground stretches across the hills above the town, where Mehmetcik teaches the illiterate Karatavuk to write Turkish in Greek letters. 'It is the story of a small coastal town in South West Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire told in the richly varied voices of the people - Christians and Muslims of Turkish and Greek and Armenian descent - whose lives are rooted there, intertwined for untold years.

Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières