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Birds Without Wings

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Birds Without Wings

By: Louis de Bernières
Narrated by: Christopher Kay
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Birds Without Wings tells of the inhabitants of a small coastal town in South West Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman empire: the local Potter and fount of proverbial wisdom; a Christian girl of legendary beauty; childhood friends who play in the hills above the town, and the two holy men of different faiths, who greet each other with the words 'infidel efendi'. It tells also of Mustafa Kemal, the man of destiny, who by virtue of military genius and sheer bloody-mindedness defeats the Franks and reshapes the whole region in his image... Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Heartfelt Inspiring Tear-jerking
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I love de Bernieres breadth of vocabulary and this book brought back memories of the awe I felt when I read Don Emanuele many year ago- such wonderful detail!
I also loved learning some history without feeling I was learning history. History I am ashamed to say I knew nothing about until I read this book. Objective reached Mr De Bearnieres. Complimenti!

Fantastic story

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This book is simply beautiful. I have laughed and cried. I got educated in a history that was not made available when I was at school. I

simply beautiful story.

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I thought I would give up after the first few hours of listening as the story progression was very slow. However the scene setting is rewarded by the rest of the book which gives a detailed if depressing account of the end of the Ottoman period and early Turkish history. Narration is excellent but patience is required and rewarded throughout.

Enjoyable but slow

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Lyrical, so many lines of the book I just had to write down because they were such powerful quotes, I enjoyed this book from beginning to end, it was perhaps a little slow for my liking at some points but everything comes together in the end and the writing which is so beautiful kept me engaged. The performance by Christopher Kay was brilliant.

Best book I've read this year so far

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One thing Louis de Berniéres has always excelled at is taking historical events - the more obscure and less well known the better - and turning them into poignant, bitter-sweet and achingly lovely character-centred sagas. As with his earlier book, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, the author spotlights an all too familiar period of history from the unusual point of view of an assortment of Christian and Muslim villagers in the Ottoman Empire, which later became Turkey. To call this a story would be oversimplifying things, because there are perhaps a dozen stories to be told in all, interwoven and interlaced as they are. I can't even imagine the amount of research that has been put into this subject leading, of course, to an epic saga that is written in such a way that at times it's hard to tell where history ends and fiction begins. An excellent effort, overall. The narration was also spot on.

Attentive, Beautiful take on historical fiction

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