Birds Without Wings

Rating:
Summary: Haunting story of war and survival
Review: "Birds Without Wings" is an exceptionally beautiful novel that takes place during the waning period of the Ottoman Empire, in the small Anatolian town of Eskibahce. As the story opens, an ethnic mix of Turks, Armenians, and Greeks, both Muslims and Christians, are living side-by-side in a comfortable and relatively peaceful existence. But first the Franks, as the Ottomans call the Western Europeans, and then the Greeks invade their homeland. These events set off a cataclysmic chain of events that tear apart the lives of the residents of Eskibahce. The Sultan declares a holy war against the invaders. The Muslims are conscripted as soldiers and the Christians are sent into labor battalions. The Armenians are evacuated from the region in a death march. The Italians occupy Eskibahce. The Christians are forced to relocate to Greece. Throughout it all, the residents struggle to survive amidst the turmoil.

Although this novel does an exemplary job of bringing alive the history of Turkey, there is far more here than a recounting of historic events. Told in alternating voices, viewpoints, and time periods, this story is panoramic in scope as it follows more than a dozen principal characters and a large cast of secondary ones through a series of interrelated story lines.

There are the childhood friends Karatavuk and Mehmetcik, who are inseparable until war breaks out. At that point, Karatavuk becomes a soldier who participates in the hellish battle of Gallipoli, and Mehmetcik, who is forced into a labor battalion, later defects and becomes a brigand. There is the beautiful Christian girl Philothei, who is betrothed to Ibrahim the goatherd and whose death is foreshadowed at the start of the story. There is the landlord and town protector Rustem Bey, who casts out his adulterous wife and takes a mistress. There are Abdulhamid Hodja and Father Kristoforos, holy men who call each other infidels yet are good friends. Interspersed throughout the story are chapters on the life and career of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who moves up the military ranks to win the fight for an independent Turkey. There are merchants and craftsmen, madmen and beggars, prostitutes and scholars. Each has a tale to tell. The main focus of the book is really the town of Eskibahce itself, rather than any one character.

De Bernieres provides a rich portrayal of his characters. The language is lyrical, and some of the vignettes have the cadence and color of folk tales. At times the story is painfully sad and sometimes it is humorous. It reflects the full spectrum of compassion and suffering, love and hatred, pride and shame, tolerance and persecution. It brings home the horrors of war and prejudice. Iskander the potter, who likes to quote proverbs, says, "Man is a bird without wings and a bird is a man without sorrows." Birds are present throughout the story. They sing throughout the night, carry letters to the dead, have their voices captured in clay whistles, and live in cages outside the entrance to many homes. The town residents are portrayed as wingless birds that are grounded in the reality of war and unable to flee the turmoil.

This is not a quick read, since it contains a lot of historical background and details about the forces that brought about the transformation of the Ottoman Empire into the Republic of Turkey. There are some Turkish words that are not defined and must be deduced within context (a short glossary would have helped). But the book tells a memorable and masterfully written set of stories that capture the heart and soul of the Turks. It is a powerful epic with an important message. Highly recommended.

Eileen Rieback

Rating:
Summary: Not Worth the Frustration
Review: As a marker, I am an enjoyer of works by such authors as Salman Rushdie, Tracey Chevalier, and many Classic writers.
I loved Captain Corelli's Mandolin, it was beautifully written, captivating, and it had a good story. I feel that in comparison to CCM, this book basically has too many characters and not enough plot. It also throws in way too many ethnic words without giving a definition. Maybe if he included a character list and a glossary this part would be taken care of, but it would still be too slow for my patience.

Rating:
Summary: Colorful characters own voices bring these tales to life
Review: Birds Without Wings is a kaleidoscope of simple Turkish villagers from their childhood serenity to tumultuous adulthood against the backdrop of war and poverty in the early 20th century. Louis De Bernieres eloquently transports the reader into their homes and describes events throughout their lives with tales told from multiple perspectives by the villagers themselves.

The author shows us the traditional beauty and sometimes savagery of how these people of multiple ethnicities lived peacefully amongst themselves for hundreds of years. It is sad and ironic that the early 20th century world leaders with their delusions of ethnic superiority and in the process of empire building caused so much death, destruction and upheaval throughout Asia Minor.

Rating:
Summary: truthful look at life during the death of the ottoman empire
Review: For the first half of the book, I absolutely could NOT put it down. Realistic, engaging, and at times humerous...I was sure I had found a new favorite....and then I got to the War section. Watch out. It gets difficult. It's still amazing. Just that it is so darn realistic and so darn TRUTHFUL, that it may be hard for fellow tender-hearts to read. I still read it and got a lot out of it, but I had to put it down for sometimes as much as a week to get through it. Still, it is well worth the read. It was a challenge, and in fact, that is exactly WHY it is well worth the read. There is so much in this book that is relavent to what is going on in the global scene today (and therefore relavent to what is going on in our personal communities, as well). And this book encompassed the big and the small pictures beautifully.

One more word of caution: De Bernieres uses phrases and words of Turkish fairly often. If you have any background in Turkish, you will like this, But I can see how it might be annoying, though it should be easy to put in context. Work around it and give the book a try.

Rating:
Summary: A chance for young Greeks and Turks to reconcile?
Review: I bought this book along with Dido Sotiriou's 1962 "Farewell Anatolia" following their recent review in The Economist. Both books tell the same story: that of two people living in relative peace alongside each other for centuries, of friendships, of common languages and blurring differences between faiths and customs... until the beginning of the 20ieth century. They explain how the Turks and Greeks wounded each other during the 1912-13 Balkan Wars, 1914-18 First World War and 1919-22 Greek campaign.
Birds without Wings is entertaining (short chapters, each from a different character's perspective; great prose), human (more about people than about history), and eye-opening. As a Greek, it made me want to learn more about what has united us with our neighbours, as well as hopeful that our younger generations will develop stronger ties with each others countries.

Rating:
Summary: A book with a split personality
Review: I enjoy des Bernieres enormously having happily read all his books (save for the dog one). Birds with broken wings differs however from previous books (e.g. Captain Corelli's mandolin) in that it combines a "close up" view of life in a small town in Turkey before the "demographic" or "Micrasiatic" catastrophe, with a "birds eye" view of history and geopolitics of the time. The chapters that form the "close up" view are impressive, very enjoyable and written in classic de Bernieres style. What is impressive (as in Corelli) is the author's grasp of culture and his insight - as I Greek I was impressed by both the accuracy and the depth of his narrative. In the "birds eye" historical parts of the book I feel that de Berniere's rather flippant language, dry humor and moral high ground stand become a liability. Alhtough there are no major historical errors the "birds eye" sections fall short of a serious scientific work and could be hard to stomach for people whose family was e.g. marched to death by Turks or disembowelled by Greeks. Still this an interesting, insightful and well written book but would have been superb if the author stuck to the "close up" story.


Rating:
Summary: A Painful Story Beautifully Told
Review: This is de Berniere's first new novel after the enormously successful `Captain Corelli's Mandolin'. Like Corelli, it's a long-ish historical novel set in the eastern Mediterreanean. Here we are taken from the 1890s to the 1920s in a small town on the coast of Anatolia on what, when the novel begins, is part of the Ottoman Empire but, by its close, has become Turkey.

It is, in many ways a less focused novel than Corelli where the narrative, though involving many characters, had a clear centre in Pelagia, her father and her two lovers. (The first of these lovers links the two novels as his mother Drosoula is a character in both.) This too has many characters, some of whom, the local aga Rustem Bey and his vivacious mistress Leyla Hanim, the young man Karatavuk who goes off to fight at Gallipoli and his Christian friend Mehmetcik, the local beauty Philothei and her lover Ibrahim, the imam Abdullamid Hodja and his wife Ayse; but there is much less in the way of a central connection. The result is sometimes more like a series of interwoven short stories than a novel but remains a very readable, often very beautiful and powerful narrative.

Much as in Corelli again, we begin with a picture of a community that is broadly speaking happy and harmonious - though not without its ugly side, as a horrible early episode involving Rustem Bey's adulterous wife along with a somewhat later manifestation of `the tyranny of honour' both manifest. In spite of these occasional horrors, the picture painted by the early chapters is one, striking and extremely salutary to our own nervous and distrustful times, of Muslims and Christians living side by side and getting along just splendidly. Then, again as in the earlier book, large historical events, war and ethnic cleansing, sweep these people up transforming and often destroying their lives.

Ethnic cleansing in particular is a central theme of the book: of the Turks from Greece in the nineteenth century, of the Greeks from Anatolia after the Great War and the genocidal forced matches inflicted on the Armenians in 1915. As Corelli, the result is a fascinating history lesson as well as a novel. Indeed many of its chapters consist exclusively of straightforward but marvellously readable historical narrative. I am certainly a lot more educated than I did about the history of both the Turkish and Greek peoples after having read it and I can think of few more enjoyable ways of getting such an education than reading this book - though `enjoyable' may not always be the right word given the appalling character of so many of the events it relates.


Rating:
Summary: A Historical Novel That Couldn't Be More Timely
Review: This long historical novel is broken up into over 90 episodes and diary-like testimonials that present the complexity of events in early 20th-century Greece and Turkey in easy to read form. Well researched by De Bernieres, the work couldn't be more timely as we see the sufferings of "civilians" in Iraq flash on our TV screens every night. As in the period of the Ottoman empire portrayed here, we witness firsthand a society being torn apart by greed, corruption, the stupidity of its own leaders, and the untrustworthy meddling of western and extremist powers.
De Bernieres telescopes this awful struggle through the lens of a small peaceful town near the southern coast of Turkey and populates it with a rich array of characters. The lives of the Christians and Muslims in Eskibahce at the turn of the nineteenth century are inextricably bound together emotionally, economically, and spiritually, and the author, unleashing a full spectrum of emotions and events, puts us in the middle of their society. Love, that most troublesome phenomenon, irrationally blooms between the unearthly and beautiful Christian girl, Philothei, and the pathetically enamored Muslim goatherd boy, Ibrahim. A life-altering friendship binds together two boys, the Christian, Mehmetcik, who later is thrown into a labor battalion during the "jihad" against the infidel Franks and Greeks, and the Muslim, Karatavuk, who fights in Gallipoli and doesn't spare us the horrors of war and ethnic and religious hatreds. The town's imam and Greek orthodox priest are mutually respectful of, if uneasy with, one another. But these bonds, so carefully composed and tenderly maintained, are undone as the Franks, the generic term for westerners, and then the Greeks tear at the fabric of this paradise, and the "civilians" are forever diminished for it.
De Bernieres has clearly taken great risks in trying to encompass so much complex history within this book. Armenians, Greeks, Muslims, pashas, Germans, Italians, Brits, and Mustapha Kamel Ataturk all are here, as are love, friendship, hatred, violence, vengeance, birth, sickness, and death. In addition, the author gives us doses of philosophy about the frailty of life as he interweaves birdsong and bird images throughout the text. We are birds without wings, who long to take to the air and be free of our ties to the earth and our mortality. But we must embrace our differences if we are to flourish. This is a lesson we have yet to learn.


Rating:
Summary: An Easy Way to Understand History
Review: This novel is an easy way to get a history lesson of the development of what is now Turkey. Set in the background of the First World War, it describes life in a small settlement where life has been going on pretty much as it always has for centuries. Here life has intertwined Christian and Muslim traditions with little friction, indeed with humor. But the world intrudes.

The invasion at Gallipoli and the rise of fanatical religion and nationalism destroy the fabric of centuries-old peace. Parallel with the story of the small town is the story of Kemal Ataturk, the defending general at Gallipoli who is now considered the founder of the Turkish Republic and its first president.

Well researched, this book presents the history of the time and place in a way that is delightful to read and educational.

Rating:
Summary: "All wars are fratricide . . . "
Review: This quote from Birds Without Wings sets the book's tone. "All men are brothers" is a theme weary from overuse. Yet de Bernieres manages to portray it in a novel fashion within an unexpected environment. In school most of us learned of "the Sick Man of Europe" - the Ottoman Empire that once wrapped the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. "Corrupt" was the word usually applied. Throughout the 19th Century the Empire was chipped away by rising nationalist forces. Within the Empire's core, however, de Bernieres portrays a land of ethnic mix, kept stable by a tolerance for neighbours. The dominant Muslims appeal to the Orthodox Christians' Mary for aid. The Christians, in turn, recite prayers while prostrating in the Muslim fashion. A Greek teacher writes letters - in Turkish, but written in Greek script. All these elements are skillfully woven in this masterpiece of fictional history.

Yet, as de Bernieres chronicles, this tightly integrated society, typified by a village on Turkey's southwest coast - Eskibahce, was shattered. Riven by hostilities, broken up and rendered a pitiful remnant - why did this idyllic situation fail? Not Ottoman "corruption" but the forces of "European Civilization" intruded on these people's lives in devastating ways. To the people of Eskibahce, all Europeans are the mysterious "Franks". There are German Franks, French Franks, British Franks, even Australian Franks - all Christian, but as Eskibahce will learn, not the Christians they are familiar with. Whatever else these Franks are, they intrude on the Ottoman society and politics. The Empires built in Europe during the 19th Century, chipping at the Ottoman hegemony have now erupted into a Great War. Eskibahce's sons go off to fight, but the demands of war prove greater than simply acquiring cannon fodder. "It was an age when everybody wanted an empire", de Bernieres writes, undertaken with no thought to the cost.

De Bernieres uses a full stage of characters to weave his story of two decades of tumult and change. Few are admirable, but all intensely human - birds without wings. Rustem Bey, a Muslim landlord, travels in search of a replacement "wife" to portray the ways of Ottoman cities. A Muslim boy - inevitably - is stationed in Gallipoli. Through his eyes we are given an uncompromising picture of war's horrors. And its lighter moments. Philothei, a beautiful baby, becomes lovelier with maturity. It's symptomatic of the author's sense of irony that her beauty brings demands to veil her face - even though she's Christian. All the women then adopt the veil to pretend beauty. A potter saves needed money to buy a gun - for what purpose? One figure, however, pervades this story - Mustapha Kamal. He will change the Ottoman Empire into the nation of Turkey. In so doing, everything Eskibahce represents is swept away with devastating results.

With a string of excellent writings to his credit, de Bernieres has here produced a masterpiece. It takes immense skill to create a continuum from so many and varied parts, yet he achieves it admirably. "Where does it all begin?", he asks. The book is a response to the query, but not an answer. War, the great destroyer, has many causes and unexpected results. The Ottoman Empire is transformed into Turkey, a more easily identified entity - a whole derived from parts. In Eskibahce, the effect is schism, disaffection and dispersal, leavened by compassion and generosity. Are there winners, or merely survivors? [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]