National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: All Things Considered 9:00 AM EST NPR
September 7, 2004 Tuesday
Louis de Bernieres’ latest novel, “Birds Without Wings”
ANCHORS: ROBERT SIEGEL
REPORTERS: ALAN CHEUSE
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Readers and moviegoers know Louis de Bernieres as the author of the
story of “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.” It’s set in a Greek village
during the occupation by Axis forces. His new book, “Birds Without
Wings,” is set earlier and across the Aegean Sea. Alan Cheuse has a
review.
ALAN CHEUSE reporting:
“Birds Without Wings” takes us to the Anatolian coastal village of
Eskibahce at the beginning of the 20th century. It’s a small but
thriving place with a multireligious and multiethnic population,
mainly Turks and Greeks, but also a number of Armenians and Kurds,
Muslims and Christians alike, and a lively market where one of the
main narrators, a potter named Iskander, sells his wares. The potter
is one of a number of multiple narrators telling us about the village
and its inhabitants, his son Karatavuk who grows up to become a
soldier and fights the British at Gallipoli, and the boy’s Christian
friend Mehmetcik, whom he teaches to write. And we also hear about
the village’s richest man, Rustem Bey, whose first wife betrays him
and who buys a concubine in an Istanbul brothel and brings her home
to Eskibahce.
And then there’s the Christian girl Philothei, so beautiful her
father has her put on a veil, and her homely friend Drosoula and
Mehmet, the tinsman, and Abdulhamid Hodja, the local imam, and his
beloved steed Nilafor(ph) and Leonidas, the dissident Greek teacher,
and George Upete Theodoru(ph), a local Greek entrepreneur, and the
disfigured squatter known as Dog who lives in some nearby ancient
caves and–well, this all must sound exhausting. But de Bernieres
portrays everyone in this large cast of characters quite memorably
and illuminates their intertwining lives and fates to make a
marvelously engaging story of a village and a place and a way of life
that’s broken only by a disastrous war, about which we learn a great
deal. It’s also the story of the rise of Kemal Ataturk, who turns his
patchwork country into a nation of some stature.
Among dozens and dozens of lovely chapter-length anecdotes, we hear
the origins of the naming of a character called Ali the Snow-bringer,
who makes a living hauling ice down from the mountains. On the day of
his birth, we learn, snow fell for the first time in nearly a
century, leaving behind a new child and a communal memory that has
the savor of those stories that tell of lost Edens and magical lands.
The entire book has that same savor.
SIEGEL: The book is “Birds Without Wings” by Louis de Bernieres. Our
reviewer is Alan Cheuse.
(Soundbite of music)
MICHELE NORRIS (Host): This is NPR, National Public Radio.