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Birds Without Wings Louis de Bernieres Books

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Birds Without Wings Louis de Bernieres Books

Lyrical writing with alternating fictional characters mixed in with factual history of Mustafa Kemal, one of the Young Turks. I have long looked for an unbiased book about the Muslims, Greeks, Armenians, Jews and the various western armies and with their unaligned political intentions. I found it in Birds Without Wings. My grandparents lived through this period, though in central Anatolia. Their oral and written histories are mirrored here. It is a long book but well worth the time.


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Birds Without Wings Louis de Bernieres Books Reviews

The people who remained in this place have often asked themselves why it was that Ibrahim went mad. I am the only one who knows, but I have always been committed to silence, because he begged me to respect his grief, or, as he also put it, to take pity on his guilt.”

Set in southwestern Anatolia (today Turkey) before and during World War I, Birds Without Wings is a wonderful novel about a small village and the people who live there. Prior to the war, the community is made up of Muslims and Christians, who live peaceably together. We have Ibrahim, a young Muslim boy who loves the beautiful Christian girl named Philothei. They plan to marry, but the war will forever change their lives and the lives of everyone in their village.

This was the first book I’ve read of Louis De Bernieres (who also wrote the notable Corelli’s Mandolin). To say I was impressed in an understatement. It is nearly the perfect novel. The characters are engaging and unforgettable. The story is riveting. The writing is so eloquent – few authors ever achieve such brilliance. And to top it all off, De Bernieres includes some very real history of an area that most of us (myself included), know very little about. Birds Without Wings is now added to my “favorites” list!
So much research must have gone into it but it is never dull. Louis de Bernieres has a wonderful sense of humour and his characters are touching, some funny, some so real that it is hard to let them go after spending so much time with them. In the Book Club I am in we all loved it. We all thought it a little long but could not figure out what should have been cut out. so we gave it 9.5 out of 10!!!
War and Peace, Turkish Rendition

“Man is a bird without wings and a bird is a man without sorrows.”

As a history lesson, what you learn is The word “Ottoman” would fall into disuse and disrepute until such time as the inevitable revisions of later days, when the world would realize that the Ottoman Empire had been cosmopolitan tolerant.

This book for me is a continuation of my explorations into Turkish culture. It is the Turkish version of War and Peace. Though there is no relation in storyline or time period the book essentially follows the same format as Tolstoy in describing family and village life and the effects war has on peace. The setting is a sleepy town on the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea called Esckbece. The town is now called Ismir. The time period for the main storyline, told from many different character views, covers the demise of the Ottoman Empire approximately the turn of the 20th century through the Turkish revolution. Any review of the book cannot pin exact dates because of the anachronistic style of storytelling. The main story teller is an old woman of whom the author, a man, captures “the old woman” persona perfectly. She owns a witty sense of humor in detailing the ironies of the cultural clashes that undermined the Ottoman ability to keep up with and then defend against the Imperialism of the Western powers.

The clashes involve; Islam-v-Christianity, Armenian-v-Turk, Eastern Anatolia-v-Bulgaria, Greek-v-Ottoman, western fashion-v-Ottoman fashion, the colorful life of a Christian-v-the grey life of a Muslim. In Esckabece, while there were differences that each would gossip about, there was an inbred kinship where the common denominator was Ottoman. The first half of the book portrays a time of peace where the clashes are take on the spirit of gossip amongst women at the well and men in for coffee houses. It seemed that the gossip was primarily from the women, while the men pursued their goals of work and the game of backgammon. To describe it in general terms, the Christians from Bulgaria and Greece were colorful with a Christian holiday being celebrated with drunken hooliganism almost every day. In the balance, the Muslims lived a bland and disciplined day to day life. While the women would gossip, ironically each had a best friend from “the other religion.” In my personal experience living in Manhattan I observed this blend of multiculturalism. New Yorkers love each other in their way, the same way Ottomans did in 1910. They were Ottomans first, and their religion came in second…tied for first. I think that is a Yogi Bearism.

Blended into the story is the life of Mustafa Kemel later known as Ataturk, the first President of Turkey, and the George Washington of Turkey. Kemel’ mindset came from western Ottoman, but was clearly of Turkish mindset holding one exception. The Turkey he envisioned needed to get into the 20th Century. Turkey needed to adopt the ways of the West. This included education, custom, government structure, and even dress code. Kemel liked to enjoy life. But he also was a Muslim and respected its discipline. He rose through the ranks with a lot of conflict with his superiors. He disagreed with the strategy of his superiors. Where the military political agendas merged with the political parties, he was of his own mind. Blending the Ataturk story with the personal saga of those small lives in Eskabece gives the book of a sense of authentic history and a real human level. The book is clearly a history novel on par with anything that Michener.

The war element describes WWI and the Turkish Revolution from an Ottoman’s perspective. This setting could not be complete without dragging into it the eighty years the preceded it. Boyhood friends would be conscripted in to the Ottoman army either as a soldier for Muslims or a civil engineer for Christians to support the war effort. The life of either left each totally altered as a human being. While they endured the horrors and atrocities of war, their families endured the famines that war bestowed upon them. The Muslim-v-Christian divide tore through Eskabece as ethnic groups were exported to various new countries, and many massacred along the way, according to the new religious orientation. Ironically when the town’s folk were forced to leave, they would ask why. Their masters would say because you are Christian or Muslim. They would say, ‘but I am Ottoman and this is my home.” Their dear Muslim friends would concur and then cry at the departure of their Christians.

Today as I do business in Turkey I now benefit from reading this book. I already love the people and the country. I now better understand the Turkish history that formulates their mindset. I can see the mix of the Christian colorful life upon a very clear straight forward Muslim people. The lines are delineated and casually crossed at the same time. Women do not wear burkas but some do wear babushkas with little or no make up. But it is not uncommon to observe at a bus stop one generation of woman dressed in a classic double breasted rain coat and babushka standing next to a very attractive young woman wearing ‘western yoga pants’ (speaking of contradiction) and a T-shirt. The men… they still play backgammon, they still smoke huka. And so do the women. Turkey is clearly a first world 21st Century country of predominate Western life style. But they have kept the best of East-West, old-new. They are one of the most enjoyable people I’ve come to know firsthand. This book is the bridge they crossed.

My bibliography is 15 pages that captures the culture of the Ottoman Empire as it evolved to a Turkish nation ready to be a world leader. Keyword cigarroomofbooks and enjoy the history lesson.
This is truly an impressive piece of work. It's a big book, a sweeping story filled with lots of characters who are introduced a chapter -- and a small bit of their story -- at a time. Sometimes I thought these bits were random and scattered. But by the end I realized the book was built in the manner of a dry stone wall; at first there is just a pile of rocks of all shapes and sizes, but the craftsman carefully places each piece and when he is finished, his creation is a thing of lasting strength and beauty.

Halfway through the book I felt that De Bernieres was about to punch me in the gut, to hit me with a single, devastating event, but he is much more subtle than that. Instead of a punch I felt a weight of sadness that slowly grew, with each small revelation, into the certainty that none of these characters' lives would end well.

It's important to remember that while this is a novel and the individual stories it tells are born of the author's imagination, the book is based on the real and terrible brutality of the Great War and its lasting aftermath (lasting even today). Read it with that knowledge in mind.
Lyrical writing with alternating fictional characters mixed in with factual history of Mustafa Kemal, one of the Young Turks. I have long looked for an unbiased book about the Muslims, Greeks, Armenians, Jews and the various western armies and with their unaligned political intentions. I found it in Birds Without Wings. My grandparents lived through this period, though in central Anatolia. Their oral and written histories are mirrored here. It is a long book but well worth the time.