birds without wings by louis de bernières

'I didn't understand any of it' complained Mehmetcik. Karatavuk closed his eyes and recited:'Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim.' When he's finished he opened his eyes, and mopped his forehead. And we recite the Holy Koran because we have to learn al-Fatihah by heart.' 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.Įpic in its narrative sweepsteeped in historical factyet profoundly humane and dazzlingly evocative in its emotional and sensual detail, Birds Without Wings is a triumph.'We learn about the Prophet and his three hundred authenticated miracles,and about Abraham and Isaac and Jonah and Omar and Ali and Hind and Fatima and the saints, and sometimes the big battles of Saladin against the barbarians. 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. 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. And there is Philothei, the Christian girl of legendary beauty, courted from infancy by Ibrahim the goatherda 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 KaratavukIskander's sonand Mehmetçik, childhood friends whose playground stretches across the hills above the town, where Mehmetçik 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≬hristians and Muslims of Turkish and Greek and Armenian descentwhose lives are rooted there, intertwined for untold years. Huge, resonant, lyrical, filled with humor and pathos, a novel about the political and personal costs of war, and of lovebetween men and women, between friends, between those who are driven to be enemies. Byatt placed the author in 'the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh.' Now, de Bernières gives us his long-awaited new novel. Louis de Bernières's last novel, Corelli's Mandolin, was met with the highest praise: 'Behind every page,' said Richard Russo, 'we sense its author's intelligence, wit, heart, imagination, and wisdom.

Birds without wings by louis de bernières