Featured Reading Guide
Louis de Bernieres
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…
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Louis de Bernières is the best-selling author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Best Book in 1995. His most recent novel is A Partisan s Daughter
topAbout the Book
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.
topLouis de Bernieres interview/review
Author Interview with Louis de Bernieres with Geraldine Bell, June 20th 2004, Observer
‘I wanted a break. I didn’t want to write Captain Corelli twice… I only write when I feel like it. I don’t ever have writer’s block – I just sometimes don’t feel like writing. And if I don’t feel like writing, I won’t bother. So sometimes I can go weeks or months without doing anything. (Like Captain Corelli, his new novel began with a holiday). I went to South-West Turkey and there’s a ghost town there. It used to be a mixed community as described in the book more or less, and they obviously had a wonderful way of life, quite sophisticated. The town really started to die when the Christian population was deported. It was walking around that very special place that gave me the idea.’
‘A book is a message to the world, and it would be nice to think that people might still hear the message after my death’
‘I don’t write a book in linear order: I write whichever bit I feel like doing. Then I fit it all together in the end.’
‘I think my books have a built-in mechanism for eliminating readers with poor concentration. I only want determined readers really.’
‘I’m one of those writers who’s always going to be trying to write War and Peace: failing, obviously, but trying.’
‘One of the odd things about becoming a novelist was that I realised I was interested in violence. But I was conscious in Birds Without Wings of toning it all down. I never use violence to excite; my purpose is to renew the moral shock. I’m interested in where violence comes from and how perfectly decent people can be dragged into commiting it…I wanted to do away entirely with goodies and baddies and only have people who were both.’
‘I’m working on a story at the moment which is based in London in the Seventies. It looks as though it’s about sexual obsession. The next big book I want to write would begin in 1892 and end about 15 years ago, and probably the first third of the book would be in Britain.’
‘Some people just have creative impulses and if they don’t create, they start to feel mentally ill. And that’s what happens to me. It might be making something in the workshop or learning a new piece of music. If I can’t play music and I can’t write, I start to get angry and tetchy and even a bit violent.’
topStarting Points for Discussion
- ‘Man is a bird without wings, and a bird is a man without sorrows’ Iskander the Potter. ‘For birds with wings nothing changes; they fly where they will and they know nothing about borders and their quarrels are very small. But we are always confined to earth, no matter how much we climb to high places and flap our arms. Because we cannot fly, we are condemned to do things that do not agree with us. Because we have no wings we are pushed into struggles and abominations, that we did not seek’. The greatness of man is that he aspires to paradise and longs to fly to the realms of heaven, whilst his tragedy lies in this very humanity which prevents him from soaring like a bird and escaping war, death and suffering. Discuss the novels title and the two statements taken from the novel in relation to the characters and central themes within the novel.
- Birds Without Wings has a freewheeling and fragmented narrative that passes swiftly from narrator to narrator. There is no central protagonist to guide us. How effective do you find this form of narrative? Does it add depth and meaning to the novel or would the story have worked better had there been fewer voices?
- The narrator in the book remarks that: ‘History…is finally nothing but a sorry edifice constructed from hacked flesh in the name of great ideas’. Discuss this statement in light of the views that Louis de Bernieres puts forth regarding the violence and bloodshed of politics and warfare for the purpose of a ‘better world’ in the novel.
- The novel is a Turkish War and Peace. It charts the lives of simple people against the vast and devastating backdrop of war. Does Louis de Bernieres achieve the epic he is trying to write? Does he manage to convey a sense of the individual whilst simultaneously portraying the rise and fall of nations and the suffering of millions?
- ‘It is one of the greatest curses of religion that is takes only the very slightest twist of a knife tip in the cloth of a shirt to turn neighbours who have loved each another into bitter enemies.’ In the novel a Muslim and Christian community which once lived harmoniously is destroyed by racial prejudice from without. Perfectly decent people are dragged into committing terrible violence in the name of ethnic cleansing. Discuss.
- Discuss Louis de Bernieres’ treatment of women in the novel. Does he sympathise with their plight in a patriarchal society? Does he feel for them in light of the restraints that their religions impose upon their lifestyles? You may wish to look at his portrayal of the key female characters in the novel such as Philothei, Leyla, Drosoual and Tamara Hanim.
Other Books by Louis de Bernieres
A Partisan’s Daughter
Chris is in his forties: bored, lonely, trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage…
Birds Without Wings
Set against the backdrop of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, the Gallipoli ca…
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin…
It is 1941 and Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to…
Suggested Further Reading
- Case Histories ~ Kate Atkinson
- A Tale of Love and Darkness ~ Amos Oz
- Birdsong ~ Sebastina Faulks