Posted by Leslie Pratch; written by Mark Johnson
This is an event.
Ten years ago, Louis de Bernierès’ “Corelli’s Mandolin” was published in the United States and became an unlikely popular success. It was a bittersweet romance that appealed to women and men, placed in an obscure historical setting that did not frighten its audience. Readers gobbled up Bernierěs’ rich prose like baclava.
Those readers have waited a decade for “Corelli’s” successor. Here it is.
Devotees will find “Birds Without Wings” familiar, yet significantly different. It is a much larger book, a vast book, told in de Bernierès’ signature style: Short chapters from multiple points of view, a mosaic of narration and confession. It is set not on a Greek island but on the southwest coast of Turkey. This village is not so different from its Greek counterpart, with its own customs and religious rituals, its eccentrics and its lovers.
“Birds” is a far more ambitious undertaking, however, and not all “Corelli” fans will adore it.
There is a love story, but from the first paragraph we know that it will end in death and madness. Nor are Ibrahim and the beautiful Philothei as central to “Birds” as Antonio and Pelagia were to “Corelli.” They are not even the characters we come to know best.
That marks the most important difference between these two great novels: “Corelli” is fundamentally about love, and “Birds” is fundamentally about loss and sorrow. The horrors of war that are the backdrop to “Corelli” are now in the foreground.
Turkey in the 19th and early 20th centuries is as foreign to most Americans as a setting could be. To Americans of Greek, Turkish or Armenian descent, however, the events of that period are still alive and painful. It was a time of “ethnic cleansing,” of mass murders and mass deportations, of wartime atrocities and further atrocities after victories were won.
At the opening of “Birds,” the village of Eskibahçe is in equilibrium, with Muslim Turks and Christian Greeks having over decades reached a mostly comfortable impasse. They are wary but respectful of each other. Some individual Greeks and Turks are close friends, and a Turkish mother with a problem may ask a Greek friend to leave an offering for the Virgin on her behalf—it never hurts to hedge one’s bets.
The events that destroy this equilibrium are complex, including Greek slaughter of Turkish Greeks, Russian slaughter of Muslims with Armenian collaboration, subsequent dispersion and murder of Armenian Turks, World War I, the fall of the Ottoman empire, the attempt by Greece to reestablish its ancient empire by carving up Turkey, and the establishment of the modern Turkish state under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The final tragedy is the forced migration of Greek Turks to Greece and Turkish Greeks to Turkey, which rends the fabric of the village forever and, de Bernierès says, proved catastrophic for all sides.
As we would expect of de Bernierès, these events are all made personal. We feel everything through a host of vivid, moving, and often amusing characters: Ibrahim the Mad, legendary beauty Philothei, wise potter Iskander, noble and heartbroken aga Rustem Bey, cross-culture friends Ayse and Polyxeni, the boys Karatavuk and Mehmetçik who grow up to be a soldier and a famous bandit, and many more. De Bernierès’ intended to write a “War and Peace” as much as he intended not to write another “Corelli,”and he has not embarrassed himself.
One major character is the young Drosoula, whom we already know from “Corelli’s Mandolin.” There are other echoes of the earlier novel, including a gentle Italian officer whose troops occupy the village for a time but who does not play the mandolin.
“Birds” has countless memorable scenes. The death of Philothei is obviously intended to be most memorable, but her character and Ibrahim’s remain curiously flat on the page—the book’s only weakness. One heartrending scene is of the village’s Greeks frantically gathering the bones of their ancestors to carry in cloth sacks on the long trip into exile.
De Bernierès’ harsh treatment of Greek Communists in “Corelli’s Mandolin” has caused controversy. His accounts of Balkan and Turkish history are destined to do the same. Under the current Turkish government, a journalist can be jailed for insulting the memory of Atatürk; de Bernierès’ portrays him as a steely opportunist.
De Bernierès’ honors individual heroes and victims, but permits none of the ethnic or national groups to be blameless. At one point the renegade Turkish soldier Ibrahim is reproached by a defenseless Greek civilian whom he has just bayoneted:”Filthy Turk, you are nothing but an animal. I was cold and said, “We are doing nothing to you that you have not been doing to us,” and he said, “And we have done nothing to you that you have not been doing to us.”
Then I pulled the bayonet out suddenly, and he staggered forward a couple of paces and fell to his knees, clutching his stomach, and it looked as if he were about to pray, and before he fell on to his face he looked up at me and said, “As for me, I never harmed anyone in my life.”
One could regard the happy ending of “Corelli” as de Bernierès’ flinching from the darker path he must have considered. In “Birds,” there is no flinching.
The image of the title—”Birds Without Wings”—is developed throughout the book. That, we are told, is what we are. Our greatness is that we aspire to the heavens; our tragedy is that we cannot fly.
Iskander the potter says it better:
“A man is a bird without wings. A bird is a man without sorrows.”
This review was originally published in the San Jose Mercury Times.
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Leslie Pratch, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist from Northwestern University with an M.B.A. in Strategy and Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a B.A. in Religion from Williams College. She works with boards of directors and private equity investors to select and develop executives. She can be reached at (312) 464-7919, leslie@pratchco.com, or visit her at www.pratchco.com.
Mark Johnson is a retired book reviewer for the San Jose Mercury Times.
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