Birds Without Wings

by Louis De Bernieres
Secker & Warburg, July 2004
644 pages

Rights sold to:
UK - Secker & Warburg (who have produced an unabridged audio version;
abridged audio rights were sold to WF Howes)
USA - Alfred Knopf & Co.
Canada - Knopf Canada
Croatia - Algoritam
Czech Republic - BB/art
Denmark - Rosinante Forlag
France - Mercure de France
Germany - Fischer Verlag (and abridged audio rights have gone to Deutsche Gramafon)
Greece - Psichogios
Israel - Zmora-Bitan
Italy - Guanda
Netherlands - Arbeiderspers
Norway - Pax Forlag
Portugal - ASA
Russia - EKSMO
Serbia - Plato
Slovak - Republic Slovart
Spain - Grijalbo
Sweden - Wahlstrom and Widstrand
Turkey - Altin Kitaplar Publishing Co., Inc


Birds Without Wings tells of the inhabitants of a small coastal town in South West Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman empire: Iskander the Potter and fount of proverbial wisdom; Philothei, a Christian girl of legendary beauty who is courted almost from infancy by Ibrahim the Goatherd, their great love culminating in tragedy and madness; Karatavuk and Mehmet-ik, childhood friends who play in the hills above the town, Mehmet-ik teaching the illiterate Karatavuk how to write Turkish in Greek letters; the two holy men of different faiths, Father Kristoforos and Abdulhamid Hodja, who greet each other with the words ’infidel efendi’; the landlord Rustem Bey, his wife’s adultery and stoning, and his journey to Istanbul in search of a Circassian mistress. It tells also of Mustafa Kemal, the man of destiny, who by virtue of military genius and sheer bloody-mindedness defeats the Franks and reshapes the whole region in his image.

When jihad is declared against the Allies the young men of the town are sent to war. Karatavuk soon finds himself at Gallipoli where he experiences the intimate brutality of trench warfare, the loss of many comrades and of his own innocence. As the great world intrudes, the twin scourges of religion and nationalism lead to forced marches and massacres, hunger grips the town and the peaceful fabric of life is destroyed. Epic, yet profoundly humane, Birds Without Wings is a glorious novel by one of our finest and best-loved novelists.

"it draws a big dramatic canvas embellished with jihad and passion, religion and nationalism, and of course, lots of love" Katherine Sale Financial Times

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.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* With a village in southwest Turkey as a microcosm, de Bernieres (Corelli’s Mandolin, 1995) offers an impressive view of this region during the early twentieth century, a tumultuous period marking the end of the Ottoman empire and the birth of the Turkish republic. In Eskibahce, inhabited by a delightful and diverse population, tradesmen make their living, children play happily, and the followers of priest Father Kristoforos and imam Abdulhamid Hodja are friends, with Muslims in distress making offerings to a Christian saint. (Here too Philothei, a Christian girl so distractingly beautiful that she is veiled, is betrothed to Muslim Ibrahim, a love that ends tragically.) But world events intervene, conscripting the men, removing the Armenians, and finally relocating people solely on the basis of religion, tearing apart communities as Christians are sent to Greece and Muslims to Turkey. The true story of Mustafa Kemal, military genius and Turkey’s first president, is interwoven with accounts--humorous, horrific (in describing the effects of war), and luminously moving--by and about the people of Eskibahce. De Bernieres’ canvas is wide, as he sketches political movements and takes religion and nationalism to task, but his characters’ stories are intimate, creating a wonderfully rich and timely epic. Michele Leber
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

The Random House Group is delighted to announce that Louis de Bernières has completed his long-awaited new novel, Birds Without Wings. It will be published on 1 July 2004 by Secker & Warburg.

Set against the background of the collapsing Ottoman empire, the Gallipoli campaign, and the subsequent bitter struggle between Greeks and Turks, Birds Without Wings traces the fortunes of one small community in South West Anatolia – a community in which Christian and Moslem lives and traditions have co-existed peacefully over the centuries and in which friendship, even love, can transcend religious differences.

When the Great War breaks out the men of the town are sent away to fight. As they face disease and death at the front, hunger and religious enmity afflict those they have left behind. Far away from these small lives, a man of destiny is emerging to create a country from the ruins of an empire. Victory at Gallipoli fails to save the Ottomans from ultimate defeat and, as a new conflict arises, Moslems and Christians struggle to understand, let alone survive, their part in the great tragedy that will destroy the peaceful fabric of their lives and reshape the whole region forever.

Geoff Mulligan, Publishing Director of Harvill Secker and Louis de Bernières’ editor, said: ‘Birds Without Wings is a glorious novel, epic and profoundly humane, set at a time when the modern world was just beginning to define itself. It has been ten years since Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and the publication of Birds Without Wings will be a major event.’

“An absorbing epic . . . It [has] the pleasingly busy feel of a 19th-century classic (it’s no surprise that de Bernières has cited “War and Peace” as a model for his work).”
–New York Times Book Review

“A fascinating, evocative work written on a grand scale not much seen today . . . In his compassionate portrayal of simple people struggling against sweeping historical forces and his vivid descriptions of the cruelties of war, de Bernières has reached heights that few modern novelists ever attempt.”
–Nicholas Gage, Washington Post Book World

“ ‘Birds Without Wings’ is one of the most engrossing novels I’ve read all year . . . A lively and enlivening history and character study and geography and theological accounting all in one . . . The book’s title comes from [the] gnomic statement ‘Man is a bird without wings. A bird is a man without sorrows.’ Sadly, as we read, we learn once again that our species can’t fly. But a novel can soar.”
–Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune

“ ‘Birds Without Wings’ remains a quite astonishing, and compulsively readable, tour de force. De Bernières has caught to perfection the slow-paced, richly descriptive, discursive, proverb-laden narrative style characteristic of Balkan and Anatolian storytellers. His subtly differentiated characters attach themselves to us and won’t let go: We come to care about them, and their deaths diminish us . . . [This] novel tells us more about our flawed human condition than is comfortable to know, and that is its greatest strength.”
–Peter Green, Los Angeles Times

“A deeply rewarding work about the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire . . . So much is remarkable about this novel, from the heft of its history to the power of its legends . . . This epic about the tragedy of borders is likely to cross all borders, moving readers everywhere as it describes the harrowing cost of remaking faraway places in the image of our dreams.”
–Christian Science Monitor

“Humorous, horrific, and luminously moving . . . De Bernières’ canvas is wide, as he sketches political movements and takes religion and nationalism to task, but his characters’ stories are intimate, creating a wonderfully rich and timely epic.”
–Booklist (starred review)

“A long, interesting and sometimes challenging book . . . De Bernières writes dense, fine-grained prose that moves with the measured grace of a 19th century novel.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“Enormously readable, intermittently brilliant, honorably conceived and felt.”
–Kirkus

“An absorbing read about a captivating time . . . a rich, poignant story.”
–The Economist

“Louis de Bernières is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh. . .he has only to look into his world, one senses, for it to rush into reality, colours and touch and taste.”
–A. S. Byatt


“He is to be understood as … a prolific and ambitious writer with a rather astonishing body of work, notable for its dense lyricism, fierce wisdom, soaring passion and remarkable wit. In this tradition, Birds Without Wings is pure de Bernières. … this is again a rich and passionate story of love and war, and in many ways a much more ambitious and important one. … Stories of grand passions move the novel: conjugal, fraternal, inter-species. Many are delivered in an episodic, fragmentary and provocative manner, interspersing voices in first and third person to create a rich, mottled chorus, an amalgam of subplots that weave and complement each other in such a way that the town itself might be better called the central character.
For those who do not devour it immediately, Birds Without Wings will sit as great epics sit, on one’s shelf demanding to be read, making one feel irresponsible and guilty, provoking resolutions of ‘must read this before death’. Do read it before you die. It would be a terrible thing to have missed a work of such importance, beauty and compassion.”
The Globe and Mail, Canada

“Birds Without Wings is a wise, beautiful and enthralling book.”
The Mail on Sunday

“De Bernières’s narrative voice is captivating and compelling … [He] deserves praise for his imaginative sympathy, which enlarges the spirit … De Bernières has written a masterpiece. Where Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was the work of a romantic young man, this is the sadder, grimmer novel of a mature writer, whose rage at human cruelty and stupidity is Tolstoyan.”
The Independent on Sunday

“A book which is about the great and important things in living – love, death, honour, failure and guilt – and about the small things that are vital to those great things … Gently humorous asides litter the book … This is a magnificent, poetic, colossal novel, filled with wry, poignant stories … It’s a beautiful mesmer of voices and people and events … Birds Without Wings is superbly written, gathering people and their hearts and souls and all their baggage of loss and hope together in one place and giving a point to life. It is, in every sense, a sublime book.”
The Irish Times

“He evokes with absolute certainty and delicacy the texture of daily life, whether that is the life of a small town and surrounding countryside, or the life in the trenches of Gallipoli … it is wonderfully vivid. There is love in the writing of this novel, which is why so many will love it.”
The Scotsman

“Although his account of Gallipoli is inspired – rarely has the ugly face of war been so lovingly described – his heart belongs to the smaller canvas, and his portrayal of sleepy, multi-ethnic village life before, during and after the First World War is a magnificent achievement.”
The Times

“De Bernières allows a multitude of characters to jostle for attention, at first to suggest the richness of the community’s life, and then to register its erosion. … de Bernières has a remarkable ability to evoke the tenderness of relationships even as he depicts their brutality … he can move seamlessly from energetic humour to poignancy, and from easy charm to a searing anger.”
The Financial Times

“… an illustration of how religion and nationalism can dehumanise people and lead them to commit heinous crimes. Salutary reading in the wake of the Bosnian and Gulf wars.”
Glamour magazine

“he has recreated a lost world at the point of its dissolution and realised the grandeur of his themes: the endurance of love, the pity of war”
Hampstead & Highgate Express

“Louis de Bernières’s most serious and ambitious achievement to date”
Times Literary Supplement