TEXT C Louis de Bernieres’
Corelli’s Mandolin is one of the most charming, accomplished novels I have read.
So the prospect of reviewing his new book had me all but salivating. Happily,
the wondrous Birds Without Wings more than lives up to expectations.
Like Corelli’s Mandolin, which was set on a Greek island during its
Italian occupation in World War Ⅱ, Birds Without Wings is also a story of two
Mediterranean cultures living cheek by jowl. Eskibahce is a small hillside
village on the southwestern coast of Turkey. At the beginning of the
20th century, Greeks and Turks--along with a smattering of Armenians
and Jews--live amicably in the town. The community is so intermingled the Greeks
speak only Turkish and the few Turks who can write use the Greek alphabet. The
line between Greek Christianity and Turkish Islam is equally skewed. Muslim
women think nothing of asking their Christian friends to light votive candles on
their behalf, and the Christians have great respect for the local
imam. It is not unusual that Ibrahim, a Muslim boy, is in love
with Philothei, the most beautiful Greek girl in town. Karatavuk, the son of the
Muslim potter, and Mehmetcik, from a Christian family, are inseparable friends,
never parted for a day until they are conscripted into service for the First
World War. But anyone familiar with the history of the region can foresee that
tragedy will befall this idyllic community: tragedy in the form of hatred, war,
expulsion and genocide. The blossoming of Turkish nationalism will reignite the
tribalism that has always marked this region of the world. Eskibahce’s way of
life will be destroyed, and this coming cataclysm hangs over the novel like the
sword of Damocles. Readers familiar with de Bernieres’ work know
he has a very unusual way of unfolding a narrative. Different characters tell
parts of the story, and sometimes an omniscient narrator chimes in with third
person authority. In Birds Without Wings, for instance, we get
some of the story with hindsight, from survivors who were children at the time.
Other events are told as they occur. Throughout, there are sections about the
rise of Mustafa Kemal, known as Ataturk, the great military leader who
westernized Turkey, that read almost like history. It is the tragic intersection
of the stories that give the novel its substance and weight. De
Bernieres’ brilliance is that he manages to recount bleak history cloaked in
radiant garb. He is a gifted storyteller who offers up his tale at an unhurried
pace, introducing violence or despair with the same inevitability as such
happier impulses as loyalty and honor. Blood feuds, retaliation, religious
intolerance--all are so ingrained in everyday life in Eskibahce that few among
its likable inhabitants really take them seriously. But it is precisely because
the novelist allows us to embrace these characters, warts and all, that we are
shocked when these ordinary people are driven by a madness that will destroy
everything and everyone they love. Birds Without Wings is, among
other things, a great anti-war novel. History, it tells: us, "is finally nothing
but a sorry edifice constructed from hacked flesh in the name of great ideas."
Strong sentiments, but a reminder that the same internecine hatred erupted in
Europe countless times during the ensuing century. Corelli’s
Mandolin was such a masterwork that it seems almost unfair that de Bernieres
could produce another book as good, perhaps better. Birds Without Wings is a
tour de force, a novel as complex and compelling, as instructive and unsettling
as history itself. The writer of the passage seems to comment on de Bernieres’ writing in an ______ manner.