Birds Without Wings

· Sold by Vintage
4.3
7 reviews
Ebook
576
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

4.3
7 reviews
A Google user
Each chapter is written in the voice of different characters (may have several chapters each) so it is history the perspective of the villagers eg young men off to war, terrible fights at Gallipoli Also author writes about Attaturk and his rise. Talks of WW1 rebellion by Anatolian troops, atrocities by Greeks and later by Turks. Had not known about the involvement of UK, France, Italy etc as they carve up influence after WW1 Forced deportation of 'Greeks' back to Greece and 'Turks' to Turkey
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A Google user
September 10, 2007
Suprising book! The first 2/3's was really hard work with all the historical detail but thereafter it turned into an emotional good read.
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A Google user
their world is so distant, but the author makes it so interesting and likeable, like its just happening next door, in the here and now.
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About the author

Louis de Bernières’s first three novels are The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts (Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best First Book Eurasia Region, 1991), Se–or Vivo and the Coca Lord (Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best Book Eurasia Region, 1992), and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman. The author was selected by Granta as one of the twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993. Corelli’s Mandolin won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best Book, in 1995. His last book was Red Dog, published in 2001.

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