Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières

The Balkan wars are followed by World War I, and then by the devastating conflict between Turkey and Greece, which led to the expulsion of Turkish Christians to Greece and the parallel evacuation of Greek Muslims to Turkey. Only when war intervenes does everything fall apart. These barbaric acts disrupt the town's natural rhythms, but never to the breaking point. Of course, there were fault lines within the empire, and Eskibahce has its own fissures: a suspected adulteress is stoned in the town square the local drunk incites a mob to assault an Armenian resident an otherwise loving father forces his son to murder his pregnant (and unwed) sister. This mingling of religions and ethnicities reflected the larger tolerance in the Ottoman Empire. The wife of the revered imam is chummy with a Christian woman a beautiful Christian girl is betrothed from childhood to an adoring Muslim goatherd a Christian boy teaches his Muslim friend to read and write. Christians and Muslims live side by side in relative harmony.

De Bernières rhapsodically evokes the pastel-hued houses, the songbirds that warble in cages outside each dwelling, the sunlight reflecting off the mosque's golden dome. But the central figure here is Eskibahce itself - a town, we learn early on, that will eventually be destroyed. 'Birds Without Wings' opens with a group of loosely connected anecdotes only gradually do they begin to pick up weight. That novel was far more fluid and accessible than this latest while political concerns drove much of the story, the relationship between Corelli and the daughter of a local doctor gave the book an emotional core.

De Bernières reached a wider audience with 'Corelli's Mandolin' (1994), which was made into a mildly corny movie starring Nicolas Cage. The narrative's scattered approach will be familiar to readers of de Bernières, a self-proclaimed 'Márquez parasite' whose ouevre includes a panoramic trilogy set in a fictional Andean village. There is no central protagonist to guide the proceedings you might care more about one character than another, but only a couple are on view for any length of time.Ī good deal of research has clearly gone into 'Birds Without Wings,' which opens in 1900 and ends in the early 1920's. Set in the fictional town of Eskibahce on the coast of southwest Anatolia (now in Turkey), 'Birds Without Wings' has 95 chapters - not to mention a six-part epilogue - that give us the perspectives of dozens of characters.

Louis de Bernières's overstuffed new novel is an absorbing epic about the waning years of the Ottoman Empire - but you may need to develop your own mental filing system to keep up with all its characters and incident. BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS By Louis de Bernières.

Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières