A parodist and devotee to equal extents
Novelist Louis de Bernières was born in London in 1954. He joined the army at 18 but left after four months. After graduating from the Victoria University of Manchester, he took a postgraduate certificate in Education at Leicester Polytechnic and obtained his MA at the University of London.
Before writing full-time, he held many varied jobs including landscape gardener, motorcycle messenger and car mechanic. He also taught English in Colombia, an experience which determined the style and setting of his first three novels, The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (1990), Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (1991) and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992), each of which was heavily influenced by South American literature.
In 1993, he was selected as one of the 20 "Best of Young British Novelists 2" promotion in Granta magazine.
His fourth novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, was published in the following year, winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Best Book). It was also shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year and it has become a worldwide bestseller now, translated into over 30 languages. A film adaptation of the novel was released in 2001, and the novel has also been adapted for the stage.
In 2001, Red Dog was published - a collection of stories inspired by a statue of a dog encountered on a trip to a writers' festival in Australia in 1998.
He wrote the introduction to The Book of Job, one in a series of books reprinted from the Bible and published individually by Canongate Press in 1998.
His play, Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World, set in southwest London, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1999, and published in 2001. He is also a regular contributor of short stories to various newspapers and magazines. His most recent novel is Birds Without Wings (2004), shortlisted for the 2004 Whitbread Novel Award and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book).
Spotlight
Quoting Greek poet George Seferis, Louis de Bernieres speaks about the places and countries that 'wound him'. Are his books healing attempts or picking at the scab, asks Stanley Borg in an exclusive interview with the author.
In a 2005 article published in The Observer, Louis de Bernières quoted a line from one of George Seferis's poems, "Wherever I travel, Greece wounds me," to illustrate how, when he was 28, a Greek holiday with his then girlfriend went wrong, inspiring him to become a writer and, eventually pen the bestselling Captain Corelli's Mandolin. For Greece, he wrote, he continues to have a "physical longing in the stomach".
Does every country he visits and writes about, from Colombia in his South America trilogy to Cephalonia in Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Eskibahce on the Lycian coast in Birds Without Wings, wound him? I ask. Is writing an attempt at healing or picking at the scab?
"That's a nice metaphor," he tells me. "I believe every country has something wrong with it," Mr de Bernières explains. "I taught English and lived in Colombia for a year. It's a beautiful country, except for the violence and chaos. Maybe it is true, there's always something wrong about a place which makes me love it. Picking at the scab? Maybe. When writing, however, I don't have a conscious agenda. All I'm interested in is telling a good story."
Mr de Bernières's "good stories" are multi-layered affairs, honed by a chorus of voices and effortlessly skipping from humour to tragedy and violence. Each of his novels varies in genre: The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman, are comic, acutely observed novels mixed with a good dash of magic realism; Captain Corelli's Mandolin is funny, moving and faithful to the history of the Italian and German occupation of Cephalonia; Red Dog is a collection of stories which centre around a celebrity dog in Western Australia; and Birds Without Wings is a beautiful, tragic ode to a place where Christians and Muslims lived together peacefully.
"To be honest," Mr de Bernières explains, "I don't know how I vary. Although history can imprison you in its truth, I find it liberating because while doing research, I always find things which I was not familiar with and which open up my possibilities no end."
I ask him whether, like the characters in his novels, we are, in fact, prisoners of history ourselves. "We are always at the mercy of people who are in a position of absolute power; who do and decide things without any consideration for the little man," Mr de Bernières replies. "Thankfully, the era of great, absolute leaders is gradually coming to an end. I try and contribute to this by always voting for the most boring candidate."
Then he continues on his influences. "My travel experiences are central. I think it's impossible to write a book on a particular place without having actually been there. I also listen to a country's music. I am fascinated, for instance, with the way verses in Greek and Turkish songs appear random. In Birds Without Wings, I used this quality to create new songs."
"Having held so many jobs, from gardener to mechanic, has trained me to observe. I remember I spent a year working in a garage. Even today, I can still remember the mix of people who used to come in, with all their different voices, jokes and turns of phrase."
I ask him whether the fact that every place he writes about becomes a tourist attraction is actually a burden. "Not really," he replies. "Places I have written about were already a tourist attraction. My novels just increased the flow. After the success of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, for instance, tourism in Cephalonia increased by some 20 per cent. Of course, there is a particular island which I would never write about - I would rather it stayed as it is."
"The film adaptation, directed by John Madden, of Captain Corelli's Mandolin also played a part in increasing the island's popularity. That was a good film, though it wasn't an excellent one. I think it would have been better to have a European film with a smaller budget rather than a Hollywood one. What is annoying are the additions they introduced in the script. The sex scene, for instance, definitely jarred - in the book, Pelagia and Corelli never become lovers. A film adaptation of Birds Without Wings? A Dutch and three Turks are working on it, though more details of that later."
"The book's popularity also affected me. After its publication, I found it very difficult to write with so many people wanting my attention. I also wanted to allow my style to change and my sense of humour to evolve. Birds Without Wings was difficult to write since I had a lot of research to do. And it's very difficult to make a Turkish friend. Now I have another book which will be out in a year's time."
"I'm not very familiar with Malta, although I have read Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea some five times, and at least twice the rest of his books. Monsarrat was very influential on my writing. He knew how to deal with violence and make it morally shocking rather than thrilling."
"A story set in Malta? I can always get at least one short story out of a place. I wrote Red Dog in a couple of weeks on a laptop in Western Australia. So who knows? The Mediterranean always makes for a good narrative."
• Louis de Bernières will be brought over by the British Council and Miller Distributors. He will be reading at the university's lecture theatre 2 on Wednesday at 1 p.m. and at the St James Cavalier's music room at 7 p.m. Tickets cost Lm1 and can be purchased from the St James box office. Book signings at Agenda Bookshops will be held at the campus store on Wednesday at 3 p.m. and at the Valletta Waterfront store on Thursday at 6.30 p.m. A signing will also be held at Sapienza Bookshop on Wednesday at 12.30 p.m.
Birds Without Wings has been 10 years in the making. It is what the movie industry would call a prequel to Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
Louis De Bernieres's first novel since Captain Corelli's Mandolin, save for Red Dog, is an epic tale of man's helplessness when faced with the adversity of historical events. Birds Without Wings is set in the Turkish village of Eskebahce, a ghost town which until the first decade of the 20th century was a sentimentally friendly place, where Christians and Muslims lived in peace and where ethnic differences were irrelevant to the inhabitants' lives - Christian girls wear veils and the stoning of an adultress is stopped when appeals are made to Sharia and to Jesus's doctrines.
The brutality of the Great War tears through the village and its complexity of inhabitants. Muslim men are called to fight for the Sultan. Armenians and Christians are marched out of the village and exiled. The Greeks invade the Aegean coast while Mustafa Kemal, Ataturk, rallies the Turkish defence. It is the start of a century of war, whichstill rages on.
What they said...
Ivan Callus
head, Department of English, University of Malta
Birds Without Wings is a novel of epic sweep. Reviewers have been quick to compare it with War and Peace because of its attempt to depict the upheaval on ordinary lives of historical change and military conflict. The comparison with Conrad's Nostromo, however, might also stand, not least because it attempts to paint a portrait of a region and its people in a critical time. The novel is, in fact, set in southwestern Turkey at the early part of the 20th century, World War I, and Kemal Ataturk's reshaping of the country, and deals with themes like enforced diaspora and the devastating consequences of differences between cultures, ideologies, and world-views. Birds Without Wings adds itself to narratives which, as in the work of Pierre Loti over 100 years ago, or, more recently, the work of Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, identifies in the fortunes of Turkey intriguing allegories of problems confronting the world more generally. Its unique value has much to do with the quality of the prose of de Bernières and the nature of his imagination, which in combining lyrical evocativeness and powerful drama, offers a different twist on the Orientalist turn within contemporary fiction.
Clare Thake Vassallo
senior lecturer, Department of English, University of Malta
Louis de Bernieres's Birds Without Wings is a wonderfully absorbing read which takes us into a small Turkish town early in the 20th century. It is a timely reminder to an age which believes it has coined a new reality called "multiculturalism", to wander through this town and its Christian, Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. People of different races and creeds have co-existed with ease and respect for each other's differences and, as the narrator points out, "there has been interbreeding for centuries, but no one stops to ask what exactly a Serb or a Macedonian or a Bulgarian or a Greek actually is".
However, the world, in the historical figure of Kemal Mustapha, better known as Ataturk, and the nationalism, xenophobia and genocide of two world wars catches up with this town and drags the fictional lovers, the beautiful Christian, Philothei, and the attractive young Muslim, Ibrahim, through terror and grief.
This intricately written novel, blending many voices and points of view, provides a focus on the invasion of major historical forces on the lives of individuals. Tearing apart their hopes, their dreams and shattering the peace of their existence.
Peter Busuttil
actor, director
This is not a bedtime book; it is a book that requires your full attention. It is a book you must save to read when you can dedicate the time and appetite for it. Surround yourself in some peace, quiet and warmth... get comfortable and immerse yourself into a number of stories, mishaps, cruelty, humour and history, as the protagonists, and there are quite a number, go through their own personal stories. If you pay enough attention, you might even catch a whiff of the Turkish landscape, Gallipoli, and the ambience that is Birds Without Wings. From Kelafonia to Anatolia, from Captain Corelli to Ibrahim, to Karatvuk, to Kemal, to Rustem, from the World War II to World War I... and from Leo Tolstoy to Louis de Bernieres. Just read with care and give yourself the time to get to grips with the story.
Paul Xuereb
book and theatre critic
Set in a small town in south-western Turkey, this massive novel sets out to depict how a society in which Muslim Turks, Christian Greeks and Armenians, and Jews lived reasonably peacefully together, was shattered by the growth of nationalism in the eastern Mediterranean. Bernieres creates a gallery of lively and exotic characters, and scenes of extraordinary drama, domestic and epic, climaxing in the bloody World War I battles at Gallipoli.
Ann Monserrat
journalist, author
With every new novel, Louis de Bernieres stretches his extraordinary talent to the full and now, with Birds Without Wings, he has undoubtedly produced a great masterpiece. This fast epic tale is set against the backdrop of a waning Ottoman empire and deals with the horrors of war and the decisions of lovers and neighbours. It is an extraordinary achievement.
Diana McNamara
A wonderful book set during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, when Muslims and Christians lived together in perfect harmony, practising both religions, as if hedging their bets. Great characters, humour and love. Iskander the Potter, Rustem Bey, whose wife was stoned for committing adultery, the Camel, who was a cigarette addict and would not get up and walk unless a lit cigarette was put up his nostril. A great epic and a mesmerising book. I really enjoyed reading it.
Francesca Gatt:
Birds Without Wings is a great book about the fall of the Ottoman Empire but seen through the eyes of Turkish villagers. We learn about the love and bitterness which existed between the Turks and the Greeks, Christians and Muslims and how they lived together. A highly recommendable book.
Novelist Louis de Bernières was born in London in 1954. He joined the army at 18 but left after four months. After graduating from the Victoria University of Manchester, he took a postgraduate certificate in Education at Leicester Polytechnic and obtained his MA at the University of London.Before writing full-time, he held many varied jobs including landscape gardener, motorcycle messenger and car mechanic. He also taught English in Colombia, an experience which determined the style and setting of his first three novels, The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (1990), Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (1991) and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992), each of which was heavily influenced by South American literature.
In 1993, he was selected as one of the 20 "Best of Young British Novelists 2" promotion in Granta magazine.
His fourth novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, was published in the following year, winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Best Book). It was also shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year and it has become a worldwide bestseller now, translated into over 30 languages. A film adaptation of the novel was released in 2001, and the novel has also been adapted for the stage.
In 2001, Red Dog was published - a collection of stories inspired by a statue of a dog encountered on a trip to a writers' festival in Australia in 1998.
He wrote the introduction to The Book of Job, one in a series of books reprinted from the Bible and published individually by Canongate Press in 1998.
His play, Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World, set in southwest London, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1999, and published in 2001. He is also a regular contributor of short stories to various newspapers and magazines. His most recent novel is Birds Without Wings (2004), shortlisted for the 2004 Whitbread Novel Award and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book).
Spotlight
Quoting Greek poet George Seferis, Louis de Bernieres speaks about the places and countries that 'wound him'. Are his books healing attempts or picking at the scab, asks Stanley Borg in an exclusive interview with the author.
In a 2005 article published in The Observer, Louis de Bernières quoted a line from one of George Seferis's poems, "Wherever I travel, Greece wounds me," to illustrate how, when he was 28, a Greek holiday with his then girlfriend went wrong, inspiring him to become a writer and, eventually pen the bestselling Captain Corelli's Mandolin. For Greece, he wrote, he continues to have a "physical longing in the stomach".
Does every country he visits and writes about, from Colombia in his South America trilogy to Cephalonia in Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Eskibahce on the Lycian coast in Birds Without Wings, wound him? I ask. Is writing an attempt at healing or picking at the scab?
"That's a nice metaphor," he tells me. "I believe every country has something wrong with it," Mr de Bernières explains. "I taught English and lived in Colombia for a year. It's a beautiful country, except for the violence and chaos. Maybe it is true, there's always something wrong about a place which makes me love it. Picking at the scab? Maybe. When writing, however, I don't have a conscious agenda. All I'm interested in is telling a good story."
Mr de Bernières's "good stories" are multi-layered affairs, honed by a chorus of voices and effortlessly skipping from humour to tragedy and violence. Each of his novels varies in genre: The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman, are comic, acutely observed novels mixed with a good dash of magic realism; Captain Corelli's Mandolin is funny, moving and faithful to the history of the Italian and German occupation of Cephalonia; Red Dog is a collection of stories which centre around a celebrity dog in Western Australia; and Birds Without Wings is a beautiful, tragic ode to a place where Christians and Muslims lived together peacefully.
"To be honest," Mr de Bernières explains, "I don't know how I vary. Although history can imprison you in its truth, I find it liberating because while doing research, I always find things which I was not familiar with and which open up my possibilities no end."
I ask him whether, like the characters in his novels, we are, in fact, prisoners of history ourselves. "We are always at the mercy of people who are in a position of absolute power; who do and decide things without any consideration for the little man," Mr de Bernières replies. "Thankfully, the era of great, absolute leaders is gradually coming to an end. I try and contribute to this by always voting for the most boring candidate."
Then he continues on his influences. "My travel experiences are central. I think it's impossible to write a book on a particular place without having actually been there. I also listen to a country's music. I am fascinated, for instance, with the way verses in Greek and Turkish songs appear random. In Birds Without Wings, I used this quality to create new songs."
"Having held so many jobs, from gardener to mechanic, has trained me to observe. I remember I spent a year working in a garage. Even today, I can still remember the mix of people who used to come in, with all their different voices, jokes and turns of phrase."
I ask him whether the fact that every place he writes about becomes a tourist attraction is actually a burden. "Not really," he replies. "Places I have written about were already a tourist attraction. My novels just increased the flow. After the success of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, for instance, tourism in Cephalonia increased by some 20 per cent. Of course, there is a particular island which I would never write about - I would rather it stayed as it is."
"The film adaptation, directed by John Madden, of Captain Corelli's Mandolin also played a part in increasing the island's popularity. That was a good film, though it wasn't an excellent one. I think it would have been better to have a European film with a smaller budget rather than a Hollywood one. What is annoying are the additions they introduced in the script. The sex scene, for instance, definitely jarred - in the book, Pelagia and Corelli never become lovers. A film adaptation of Birds Without Wings? A Dutch and three Turks are working on it, though more details of that later."
"The book's popularity also affected me. After its publication, I found it very difficult to write with so many people wanting my attention. I also wanted to allow my style to change and my sense of humour to evolve. Birds Without Wings was difficult to write since I had a lot of research to do. And it's very difficult to make a Turkish friend. Now I have another book which will be out in a year's time."
"I'm not very familiar with Malta, although I have read Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea some five times, and at least twice the rest of his books. Monsarrat was very influential on my writing. He knew how to deal with violence and make it morally shocking rather than thrilling."
"A story set in Malta? I can always get at least one short story out of a place. I wrote Red Dog in a couple of weeks on a laptop in Western Australia. So who knows? The Mediterranean always makes for a good narrative."
• Louis de Bernières will be brought over by the British Council and Miller Distributors. He will be reading at the university's lecture theatre 2 on Wednesday at 1 p.m. and at the St James Cavalier's music room at 7 p.m. Tickets cost Lm1 and can be purchased from the St James box office. Book signings at Agenda Bookshops will be held at the campus store on Wednesday at 3 p.m. and at the Valletta Waterfront store on Thursday at 6.30 p.m. A signing will also be held at Sapienza Bookshop on Wednesday at 12.30 p.m.
Birds Without Wings has been 10 years in the making. It is what the movie industry would call a prequel to Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
Louis De Bernieres's first novel since Captain Corelli's Mandolin, save for Red Dog, is an epic tale of man's helplessness when faced with the adversity of historical events. Birds Without Wings is set in the Turkish village of Eskebahce, a ghost town which until the first decade of the 20th century was a sentimentally friendly place, where Christians and Muslims lived in peace and where ethnic differences were irrelevant to the inhabitants' lives - Christian girls wear veils and the stoning of an adultress is stopped when appeals are made to Sharia and to Jesus's doctrines.The brutality of the Great War tears through the village and its complexity of inhabitants. Muslim men are called to fight for the Sultan. Armenians and Christians are marched out of the village and exiled. The Greeks invade the Aegean coast while Mustafa Kemal, Ataturk, rallies the Turkish defence. It is the start of a century of war, whichstill rages on.
What they said...
Ivan Callus
head, Department of English, University of Malta
Birds Without Wings is a novel of epic sweep. Reviewers have been quick to compare it with War and Peace because of its attempt to depict the upheaval on ordinary lives of historical change and military conflict. The comparison with Conrad's Nostromo, however, might also stand, not least because it attempts to paint a portrait of a region and its people in a critical time. The novel is, in fact, set in southwestern Turkey at the early part of the 20th century, World War I, and Kemal Ataturk's reshaping of the country, and deals with themes like enforced diaspora and the devastating consequences of differences between cultures, ideologies, and world-views. Birds Without Wings adds itself to narratives which, as in the work of Pierre Loti over 100 years ago, or, more recently, the work of Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, identifies in the fortunes of Turkey intriguing allegories of problems confronting the world more generally. Its unique value has much to do with the quality of the prose of de Bernières and the nature of his imagination, which in combining lyrical evocativeness and powerful drama, offers a different twist on the Orientalist turn within contemporary fiction.
Clare Thake Vassallo
senior lecturer, Department of English, University of Malta
Louis de Bernieres's Birds Without Wings is a wonderfully absorbing read which takes us into a small Turkish town early in the 20th century. It is a timely reminder to an age which believes it has coined a new reality called "multiculturalism", to wander through this town and its Christian, Muslim and Jewish inhabitants. People of different races and creeds have co-existed with ease and respect for each other's differences and, as the narrator points out, "there has been interbreeding for centuries, but no one stops to ask what exactly a Serb or a Macedonian or a Bulgarian or a Greek actually is".
However, the world, in the historical figure of Kemal Mustapha, better known as Ataturk, and the nationalism, xenophobia and genocide of two world wars catches up with this town and drags the fictional lovers, the beautiful Christian, Philothei, and the attractive young Muslim, Ibrahim, through terror and grief.
This intricately written novel, blending many voices and points of view, provides a focus on the invasion of major historical forces on the lives of individuals. Tearing apart their hopes, their dreams and shattering the peace of their existence.
Peter Busuttil
actor, director
This is not a bedtime book; it is a book that requires your full attention. It is a book you must save to read when you can dedicate the time and appetite for it. Surround yourself in some peace, quiet and warmth... get comfortable and immerse yourself into a number of stories, mishaps, cruelty, humour and history, as the protagonists, and there are quite a number, go through their own personal stories. If you pay enough attention, you might even catch a whiff of the Turkish landscape, Gallipoli, and the ambience that is Birds Without Wings. From Kelafonia to Anatolia, from Captain Corelli to Ibrahim, to Karatvuk, to Kemal, to Rustem, from the World War II to World War I... and from Leo Tolstoy to Louis de Bernieres. Just read with care and give yourself the time to get to grips with the story.
Paul Xuereb
book and theatre critic
Set in a small town in south-western Turkey, this massive novel sets out to depict how a society in which Muslim Turks, Christian Greeks and Armenians, and Jews lived reasonably peacefully together, was shattered by the growth of nationalism in the eastern Mediterranean. Bernieres creates a gallery of lively and exotic characters, and scenes of extraordinary drama, domestic and epic, climaxing in the bloody World War I battles at Gallipoli.
Ann Monserrat
journalist, author
With every new novel, Louis de Bernieres stretches his extraordinary talent to the full and now, with Birds Without Wings, he has undoubtedly produced a great masterpiece. This fast epic tale is set against the backdrop of a waning Ottoman empire and deals with the horrors of war and the decisions of lovers and neighbours. It is an extraordinary achievement.
Diana McNamara
A wonderful book set during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, when Muslims and Christians lived together in perfect harmony, practising both religions, as if hedging their bets. Great characters, humour and love. Iskander the Potter, Rustem Bey, whose wife was stoned for committing adultery, the Camel, who was a cigarette addict and would not get up and walk unless a lit cigarette was put up his nostril. A great epic and a mesmerising book. I really enjoyed reading it.
Francesca Gatt:
Birds Without Wings is a great book about the fall of the Ottoman Empire but seen through the eyes of Turkish villagers. We learn about the love and bitterness which existed between the Turks and the Greeks, Christians and Muslims and how they lived together. A highly recommendable book.