Birds Without Wings
Louis de Bernieres explores the fall of the Ottoman Empire
The latest novel by the author of Captain Correlli's Mandolin is an equally mesmerizing meditation on the universal themes of love, war, courage and mercy
Like Captain Correlli's Mandolin and his Latin American-inspired trilogy, The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman, Louis de Bernieres' most recent novel Birds Without Wings combines the grandness of historical upheaval with compassionate insight into the follies and limitations of human nature. As one character, the illiterate author of proverbs, Iskander the Potter, attests: "Man is a bird without wings...and a bird is a man without sorrows."
Historical Backdrop: The Painful Birth of Turkey
Birds Without Wings is set in the early 1900s in the idyllic town of Eskibahce in South West Anatolia. De Bernieres traces the fortunes and misfortunes of this small community in which Christian and Muslims have co-existed peacefully for centuries.
The fall of the once cosmopolitan and tolerant Ottoman Empire disrupts their lives irreversibly as the secular and liberal agenda of Mustafa Kemal, the founder of modern Turkey, spreads havoc on the region. From the forced marches of the Armenians and later the Christians to the horrifying trench warfare at Gallipoli, de Bernieres bears witness to the often faceless statistics of history through the joys and sufferings of a selection of complex, memorable characters.
The Dramas of Eskibahce
Amongst the town's inhabitants are Philothei, a Christian girl of legendary beauty who is courted from childhood by Ibrahim the Goatherd, a love story culminating in tragedy and madness; Karatavuk and Mehmetcik, childhood friends who are forced through war down different yet equally barbaric paths as a result of their differing faiths; and the enigmatic town landlord Rustem Bey, who demonstrates both courage and humanity in the face of horrors and yet great cruelty when faced with an adulterous wife. Their religious leaders, a married priest and an imam who has memorized the entire Qu'ran, guide both Muslim and Christian alike in the close-knit village.
The Dangers of Intolerance
The underlying message of the book is both timely and timeless. Given present-day politics that focus on the divisive aspects of religion, the portrait of a tranquil, tolerant town destroyed by secular fanaticism is a refreshing reversal. De Bernieres reminds us that it is not the ideas of religion or liberal secularism themselves that cause conflict, but when these ideas are taken to the extremes of exclusion and intolerance.
De Bernieres' graceful prose sums up this underlying message: "The triple contagions of nationalism, utopianism and religious absolutism effervesce together into an acid that corrodes the mortal metal of a race, and it shamelessly and even proudly performs deeds that it would deem vile if they were done by any other."
