Birds Without Wings [Paperback]

Louis de Bernieres (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 28, 2005

In his first novel since Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernières creates a world, populates it with characters as real as our best friends, and launches it into the maelstrom of twentieth-century history. The setting is a small village in southwestern Anatolia in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. Everyone there speaks Turkish, though they write it in Greek letters. It’s a place that has room for a professional blasphemer; where a brokenhearted aga finds solace in the arms of a Circassian courtesan who isn’t Circassian at all; where a beautiful Christian girl named Philothei is engaged to a Muslim boy named Ibrahim. But all of this will change when Turkey enters the modern world. Epic in sweep, intoxicating in its sensual detail, Birds Without Wings is an enchantment.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's been nearly a decade since Captain Corelli's Mandolin became a word-of-mouth bestseller (and then a major feature film), and devotees will eagerly dig into de Bernières' sweeping historical follow-up. This time the setting is the small Anatolian town of Eskibahçe, in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. The large cast of characters of intermixed Turkish, Greek and Armenian descent includes breathtakingly lovely Philothei, a Christian girl, and her beloved Ibrahim, the childhood friend and Muslim to whom she is betrothed. The narrative immediately sets up Philothei's death and Ibrahim's madness as the focal tragedy caused by the sweep of history—but this is a bit of a red herring. Various first-person voices alternate in brief chapters with an authorial perspective that details the interactions of the town's residents as the region is torn apart by war; a parallel set of chapters follows the life of Kemal Atatürk, who established Turkey as a modern, secular country. The necessary historical information can be tedious, and stilted prose renders some key characters (like Philothei) one-dimensional. But when de Bernières relaxes his grip on the grand sweep of history—as he does with the lively and affecting anecdotes involving the Muslim landlord Rustem Bey and his wife and mistress—the results resonate with the very personal consequences that large-scale change can effect. Though some readers may balk at the novel's sheer heft, the reward is an effective and moving portrayal of a way of life—and lives—that might, if not for Bernières's careful exposition and imagination, be lost to memory forever.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The New Yorker

"Destiny caresses the few, but molests the many," a proverb-prone narrator reflects as he begins the story of Eskibahçe, a small town in Anatolia, and of its inhabitants' fate in the turmoil of the early twentieth century. After generations of cheerful intermingling, the town's Muslim Turks, Christian Greeks, and Armenians are divided by the First World War and then by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. De Bernières gamely tries to illustrate the human cost—a complex series of migrations and persecutions—through a cast of endearing, folksy characters. He interleaves the narratives with the biography of Kemal Atatürk. But history, in this case, may be too vast for his approach; despite many affecting moments, both the big picture and the small stories are lost in an overwhelming sprawl.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Trade Paperback Edition edition (June 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400079322
• ISBN-13: 978-1400079322
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (138 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Louis de Bernieres was awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book Eurasia Region in 1991 and 1992, and for Best Book in 1995. He was selected by Granta as one of the twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993, and lives in Norfolk, East Anglia.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

140 of 144 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars First-rate storytelling August 1, 2005

By Anne

Format:Paperback

BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS is a rare specimen in the genre of historical novels: a success. It is a compelling, readable, and historically credible tale of love and tragedy at the time of the Ottoman collapse in Turkey. Told from multiple points of view, with chapters narrated by the diverse cast of characters themselves and biographical segments on the career of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, this novel tells the story of how modern secular Turkey was forged out of the crucible of the Balkan Wars, World War I and the Greek War of Independence. The narrators are the ordinary men and women -- Christian and Muslim, Greek and Turk -- of a small village near Telmessos (now Fethiye) in southwestern Turkey. The stories they tell of war, loss and survival are fully human and utterly heartrending. I will not soon forget de Bernieres' sorrowful depiction of the cross-deportations of Greeks and Turks from lands they had inhabited for centuries. Neither will I forget the dignity and romance of characters like the aga Rustem Bey, his mistress Leyla Hanim and the village imam Abdulhamid Hodja.

If you're looking for old-fashioned storytelling with vibrant, lifelike characters who inhabit an artfully recreated historical world, I highly recommend Louis de Bernieres' BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS.

81 of 84 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting story of war and survival October 9, 2004

By Eileen Rieback

Format:Hardcover

"Birds Without Wings" is an exceptionally beautiful novel that takes place during the waning period of the Ottoman Empire, in the small Anatolian town of Eskibahce. As the story opens, an ethnic mix of Turks, Armenians, and Greeks, both Muslims and Christians, are living side-by-side in a comfortable and relatively peaceful existence. But first the Franks, as the Ottomans call the Western Europeans, and then the Greeks invade their homeland. These events set off a cataclysmic chain of events that tear apart the lives of the residents of Eskibahce. The Sultan declares a holy war against the invaders. The Muslims are conscripted as soldiers and the Christians are sent into labor battalions. The Armenians are evacuated from the region in a death march. The Italians occupy Eskibahce. The Christians are forced to relocate to Greece. Throughout it all, the residents struggle to survive amidst the turmoil.

Although this novel does an exemplary job of bringing alive the history of Turkey, there is far more here than a recounting of historic events. Told in alternating voices, viewpoints, and time periods, this story is panoramic in scope as it follows more than a dozen principal characters and a large cast of secondary ones through a series of interrelated story lines.

There are the childhood friends Karatavuk and Mehmetcik, who are inseparable until war breaks out. At that point, Karatavuk becomes a soldier who participates in the hellish battle of Gallipoli, and Mehmetcik, who is forced into a labor battalion, later defects and becomes a brigand. There is the beautiful Christian girl Philothei, who is betrothed to Ibrahim the goatherd and whose death is foreshadowed at the start of the story. There is the landlord and town protector Rustem Bey, who casts out his adulterous wife and takes a mistress. There are Abdulhamid Hodja and Father Kristoforos, holy men who call each other infidels yet are good friends. Interspersed throughout the story are chapters on the life and career of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who moves up the military ranks to win the fight for an independent Turkey. There are merchants and craftsmen, madmen and beggars, prostitutes and scholars. Each has a tale to tell. The main focus of the book is really the town of Eskibahce itself, rather than any one character.

De Bernieres provides a rich portrayal of his characters. The language is lyrical, and some of the vignettes have the cadence and color of folk tales. At times the story is painfully sad and sometimes it is humorous. It reflects the full spectrum of compassion and suffering, love and hatred, pride and shame, tolerance and persecution. It brings home the horrors of war and prejudice. Iskander the potter, who likes to quote proverbs, says, "Man is a bird without wings and a bird is a man without sorrows." Birds are present throughout the story. They sing throughout the night, carry letters to the dead, have their voices captured in clay whistles, and live in cages outside the entrance to many homes. The town residents are portrayed as wingless birds that are grounded in the reality of war and unable to flee the turmoil.

This is not a quick read, since it contains a lot of historical background and details about the forces that brought about the transformation of the Ottoman Empire into the Republic of Turkey. There are some Turkish words that are not defined and must be deduced within context (a short glossary would have helped). But the book tells a memorable and masterfully written set of stories that capture the heart and soul of the Turks. It is a powerful epic with an important message. Highly recommended.

Eileen Rieback

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Painful Story Beautifully Told September 6, 2004

By snalen

Format:Hardcover

This is de Berniere's first new novel after the enormously successful `Captain Corelli's Mandolin'. Like Corelli, it's a long-ish historical novel set in the eastern Mediterreanean. Here we are taken from the 1890s to the 1920s in a small town on the coast of Anatolia on what, when the novel begins, is part of the Ottoman Empire but, by its close, has become Turkey.

It is, in many ways a less focused novel than Corelli where the narrative, though involving many characters, had a clear centre in Pelagia, her father and her two lovers. (The first of these lovers links the two novels as his mother Drosoula is a character in both.) This too has many characters, some of whom, the local aga Rustem Bey and his vivacious mistress Leyla Hanim, the young man Karatavuk who goes off to fight at Gallipoli and his Christian friend Mehmetcik, the local beauty Philothei and her lover Ibrahim, the imam Abdullamid Hodja and his wife Ayse; but there is much less in the way of a central connection. The result is sometimes more like a series of interwoven short stories than a novel but remains a very readable, often very beautiful and powerful narrative.

Much as in Corelli again, we begin with a picture of a community that is broadly speaking happy and harmonious - though not without its ugly side, as a horrible early episode involving Rustem Bey's adulterous wife along with a somewhat later manifestation of `the tyranny of honour' both manifest. In spite of these occasional horrors, the picture painted by the early chapters is one, striking and extremely salutary to our own nervous and distrustful times, of Muslims and Christians living side by side and getting along just splendidly. Then, again as in the earlier book, large historical events, war and ethnic cleansing, sweep these people up transforming and often destroying their lives.

Ethnic cleansing in particular is a central theme of the book: of the Turks from Greece in the nineteenth century, of the Greeks from Anatolia after the Great War and the genocidal forced matches inflicted on the Armenians in 1915. As Corelli, the result is a fascinating history lesson as well as a novel. Indeed many of its chapters consist exclusively of straightforward but marvellously readable historical narrative. I am certainly a lot more educated than I did about the history of both the Turkish and Greek peoples after having read it and I can think of few more enjoyable ways of getting such an education than reading this book - though `enjoyable' may not always be the right word given the appalling character of so many of the events it relates.