2004 novel by louis de bernieres6/12/2023 ![]() ![]() We meet at the Georgian rectory he bought on the proceeds of Captain Corelli: a large, elegant, cream house surrounded by meadows and woodland in Norfolk, which, however, is unlikely ever to be featured in an interiors magazine (even if de Bernières were the sort of person to welcome such an offer, which he isn't). But he thinks that Birds Without Wings is probably a better novel, and he could well be right. De Bernières has done without a main protagonist to build up a composite portrait of a place by means of a tangle of tales and characters. ![]() It's very long, the Turkish names look more forbidding than the Greek, the history and geography of the collapse of the Ottoman empire are unfamiliar (where does Thrace begin and end exactly?) and, most significantly, there is no single central story, no Pelagia and Corelli, to carry the reader through. It is perfectly possible that it won't sell as well as Captain Corelli. ![]() And the new book is also preoccupied by communities turned against each other, with decent people uprooted and destabilised by war and seeing their sense of themselves slipping away with small acts of heroism in the face of heedless, grinding history.ĭe Bernières's new book is, pretty obviously, an attempt at a modern War and Peace, with Kemal Ataturk standing in for Napoleon. ![]()
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