This month's book club selection is Birds Without Wings, an epic novel by Louis de Bernieres about the final years of the Ottoman Empire. I am about 2/3 of the way through, and still developing my impressions, but since it is long and there is likely much to say, I figured I may as well begin.
De Bernieres is also the author of Corelli's Mandolin, of Nicolas Cage film fame. A friend reviewed that book approximately as follows: "I expected it to be really bad, but it wasn't." Which is a little mysterious, but I would say that Birds Without Wings is probably better. It is sweeping - covering at least 20 years in the life of a little town in Anatolia, as well as the fall of the Ottomans and the rise of Kemal Ataturk. How multiculturalism hardens into nationalism forms another central theme. And there are at least 10 characters telling the narrative, among them the town imam, his wife, her Christian best friend, the latter's beautiful daughter and her ugly best friend; the potter and his son and son's friend, as well as the town's nobleman and his mistress. Plus of course Mustafa Kemal. The chorus of different voices makes for a rich and almost magical set of tales (some more enjoyable than others, of course, but all crucial to the whole).
It's a tragedy, by the way. The full extent isn't yet clear, but we just made it through World War I and the traumatic birthing of modern Turkey and Greece is yet to come.
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