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Birds Without Wings
A Novel
by Louis de Bernières


9.0

based on 16 reviews
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based on 2 votes
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From the author of "Captain Corellis Mandolin" comes the story of a small coastal town in South West Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire told in the richly varied voices of the peopleChristians and Muslims of Turkish and Greek and Armenian descentwhose lives are rooted there, intertwined for untold years. [Random House]

Alfred A. Knopf, 576 pages
08/24/2004
$25.95

ISBN: 1400043417

Fiction
Historical Fiction

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Chicago Tribune Alan Cheuse

Just peace and war, with the story such as it is told in a beautiful lyrical style and with deep insight into the way others live in other times...One of the most engrossing novels I've read all year.

Christian Science Monitor Ron Charles

So much is remarkable about this novel, from the heft of its history to the power of its legends.

Los Angeles Times Peter Green

A quite astonishing, and compulsively readable, tour de force. De Bernières has caught to perfection the slow-paced, richly descriptive, discursive, proverb-laden narrative style characteristic of Balkan and Anatolian storytellers.

The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Camilla Gibb

Do read it before you die. It would be a terrible thing to have missed a work of such importance, beauty and compassion.

Washington Post Nicholas Gage

A fascinating, evocative work written on a grand scale not much seen today. Despite its flaws, it is as rich and compelling as any novel written about the Anatolian upheaval.

The Independent Amanda Craig

De Bernières's narrative voice is captivating and compelling... In his account of small-town life, with its frictions, lies, meanness and acts of charity, and in his descriptions of the horror and humour of war, de Bernières has written a masterpiece.

The Economist

An absorbing read about a remote but captivating time. The Ottoman world's break-up is a rich, poignant story, and Mr de Bernières is a good storyteller. At times he is nearly as good as Dido Sotiriou.

London Review Of Books Christopher Tayler

Then there's the question of the writing style, which must be one of the strangest ever used by someone who's found himself computing his sales by the million.

San Francisco Chronicle Charles Solomon

If there's an obscure, multi-syllable adjective that can replace a simple, familiar one, he invariably chooses the former. He delights in including words and phrases in Turkish and Greek, but rarely bothers to translate them.

The Independent Robert Hanks

The book is monstrously baggy and repetitive, and the writing often atrocious - the dialogue, which is presumably intended to be taken as colloquial Turkish, sometimes includes bizarre archaisms (fitchew?), while the prose unselfconsciously mixes cliches with obscurities (immanitous?).

The New York Times Book Review Amy Kroin

Bernières's overstuffed new novel is an absorbing epic about the waning years of the Ottoman Empire -- but you may need to develop your own mental filing system to keep up with all its characters and incident.

The Spectator Philip Hensher

This is a big, rage-filled, steaming narrative which blunders and exhilarates with equal conviction; let's leave it, roughly, at that.

The Guardian James Buchan

De Bernières finds it agony to stop. The reader closes the book with a satisfied thud only to hear the yelping of two trapped epilogues and a crushed postscript.

The New Yorker

Despite many affecting moments, both the big picture and the small stories are lost in an overwhelming sprawl.

Daily Telegraph Lewis Jones

Shakespeare managed the basic exposition of "Antony and Cleopatra" in its first sentence. In this novel, de Bernières provides, among much other historical apparatus, 22 chapters, randomly scattered, on the career of Mustafa Kemal (later Ataturk), which in no sense read like fiction and are for the most part irrelevant to the story.

Daily Telegraph David Robson

There is not the grand narrative sweep of the original "War and Peace." The book feels as if it has been assembled from bits and pieces, like an IKEA pack.

The average user rating for this book is 9.0 (out of 10) based on 2 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Erick M gave it a9:
As informative for a budding novelist as any book in the last ten years. Louis de Bernieres has a way of peeling back the petals and muck of history to delightful ends.

Jean C gave it a9:
A great sprawling account of Turkey's rocky road to independance! Wonderful language; geat images, amazing characters... show humanity of all people whatever their religion or nationality. Reading this book made me read about the events between the Turks, Kurds, Greeks, Italians, Armenians following the first Word War. Margaret MacMillan's 'Paris 1919', chapters 26 & 29 are directly related to the events in 'Birds without Wings. I just loved this book; but then I'm a real fan of de Bernieres.

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Birds Without Wings A Novel by Louis de Bernières

Birds Without Wings
A Novel
by Louis de Bernières