A wonderful novel full of great meanings , the author in magnificent manner portrayed the fictional town of eskibahçe (located in South West Asia Minor near the famous city of İzmir) as a standard sample of religious ethnic Coexistence throughout the centuries of the cosmopolitan multi ethnic multi religious Ottoman Empire history.
In this town where Greek Christians, Armenian Christians and Turkish speaking Muslims all live side by side in peace and harmony leading their simple lives. This peace and harmony is to be disturbed by the invading storm of war bringing with it nationalism and religious hatred where the innocent population of this town are to pay the price regardless of age, gender, religion or ethnicity.
The author starting his story around the turn of the twentieth century with the Ottoman empire living it's final couple of decades going into WW1 then defeat and collapse sparking the Turkish War of Independence and finally the establishment of the modern republic of Turkey. In these historical events the author with talent pictures the many scenes of love and hatred, of friendship, of social and cultural diversity, horrors of war, of ruthless politics where the strong and mighty powers plan the future and misery of the simple and innocent ...
The story in my opinion is fit to be turned into a movie with it's loads of drama and meanings ..
A strong recommendation to readers interested in Coexistence, late Ottoman empire, Great war drama and fiction.

I would like to share some of the quotes I managed to note down while reading this novel :

There comes a point in life where each one of us who survives begins to feel like a ghost that has forgotten to die at the right time, and certainly most of us were more amusing when we were young. It seems that age folds the heart in on itself. Some of us walk detached, dreaming on the past, and some of us realize that we have lost the trick of standing in the sun. For many of us the thought of the future is a cause for irritation rather than optimism, as if we had enough of new things, and wish only for the long sleep that rounds the edges of our lives. I feel this weariness myself.
P.1

They say that, for a madman, every day is a holiday, but they also say that insanity has seventy gates.
P.3

Destiny caresses the few, but molests the many, and finally every sheep will hang by it's own foot on the butcher's hook, just as every grain of wheat arrives at the millstone, no matter where it grew.

P.5

Since those times of whirlwind the world has learned over and over again that the wounds of the ancestors make the children bleed. I do not know if anyone will ever be forgiven, or if the harm that was done will ever be undone. Enough of this, however. The story begins, and he who slaps his own face should not cry out.

P.6



When you are old your memory plays tricks with you.

P.19

To forget the bad things is good. That is obvious, but sometimes one should also forget the things that were wonderful and beautiful, because if you remember them, then you have to endure the sadness of knowing that they have gone.

P.24

Man is a bird without wings, and a bird is a man without sorrows.

P.48

If you can't be raving mad when you're​ a child, when else will you get the chance?

P.122

Righteousness is good morality, but it is also that what about the soul feels tranquil and the heart feels tranquil.

P. 279

One of the odd things about being at war is that you are exposed to all sorts of miracles.

P.382


I can't convey to you the relief, the sheer pleasure, of abandoning the impossible struggle, the moment when one realizes that it is less horrifying to die than to continue to struggle for life.

P.506

Fate depends on the smallest things

P.550

an amazingly touching story of life in a village in Asia Minor at the end of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of Ataturk, how war changes young people, and the destruction, vicious devastation of the previously wonderful, multicultural city of Smyrna. He writes beautifully - folks (even the fictitious ones) are real and i felt their pain and confusion.
how Turkey (one of the most progressive Islamic countries, especially around Istanbul) came to be, win against the Allies at Gallipoli - thus avoiding being parceled out to the remaining colonial powers, and sadly, how genocide here began (Armenians, Greeks on Turks and Turks on Greeks).

Just been re-reading this as it was my book club choice.



What can I say? It is probably one of my favourite books ever. Its a patchwork of small and great lives in the Turkish Empire. Where Muslims and Christians live side by side, with their strange customs and quirks, as you just wait for the hand of history to intervene and shatter their peace. Its in turns both funny and tragic and the characters are vividly painted, warts and all.



Don't be put off by its huge size, I just hurtled along with the switching narrators and changing time and place.



A stunning achievement from one of Britain's best current writers.

4.5 stars. An interesting, humorous, sad, tragic, memorable, engaging historical fiction novel set mostly in a small town in Turkey in the early 1900s. There are many interesting characters, like Islander the potter who makes unique bird whistles, Leyla, the mistress of the town’s richest man, Rustem Bey, Philothei, the beautiful Greek Ottoman and Mustafa Kemal, the Turkish military leader. The account of the Allied failed invasion of Turkey from the Turkish perspective is well told. Excellent storytelling. Highly recommended. Readers who enjoyed reading ‘Corelli’s Mandolin’ should find this novel an equally satisfying reading experience.

I could not get into this book.

I read and loved Corelli's Mandolin but never felt any of the same attachment to the characters in Birds. This one was a disappointment for me.

The last 10% was a lot!

I sincerely enjoyed the stories. I learned a lot about what went on during the first World War and the war with the Greeks afterwards, in Turkey. There was so much that happened, it was really almost hard to take it all in. I absolutely loved the characters and the names of the people in the small village of Eskibahce.

Beautifully insightful, inspiring and deeply moving, ‘Birds Without Wings’ could very easily have been one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Although I’ve only read one other of Louis de Bernieres’s books –‘Notwithstanding’, which I thoroughly enjoyed at age thirteen, but on hindsight might have to reread it in order to fully understand its depth – I think that after reading ‘Birds Without Wings’, he’s quickly jumped to the top of my list of favourite authors. His writing is stunning, and I can’t seem to get nearly enough of it. He makes it seem so effortless to write a six hundred-page novel about the supposedly ordinary lives of insignificant people in an almost forgotten community.

De Bernieres weaves the lives of his characters expertly, inspiring in the reader a deep empathy for a community so incredibly lost in stupendous ignorance of the outside world that Greeks and Turks are able to live together peacefully, despite their religious and cultural differences. The careful crafting of the story and witty humour interspersed with gasp-worthy moments of scandal and excitement creates a flow of events that makes the novel unbearable to be put down. I have a feeling that the characters and their separate narratives will haunt my dreams for months, but I can’t find it in myself to shudder at the thought of this.

‘Birds Without Wings’ is phenomenal, and I highly, highly recommend it, but only to people who are able to set aside several days of doing nothing other than reading, and then a further day or two to recover and shed a couple of tears.

I can’t remember the last time I read something so meticulously rendered that I actually felt as if I was watching a movie in my head. Unbelievably beautiful, complex writing with a level of depth and observational power that is as focused as a laser point. You’re thrown head-first into this stunning, vivid, multi-coloured world that you don’t see coming. It was a joy to read every single letter of this book.

Everyday, every single day there are those heart-breaking stories of people fleeing their countries, by road, crossing razor sharp barbed wire fences.
People fleeing in flimsy rubber dinghies, being caught in storms and waves, toddlers dying, flung on shores, beautiful lifeless dolls.

Heartbreaking, just heartbreaking...

And then my mind races to the beautiful, beautiful ‘Birds Without Wings’.
My mind moves with anguish to the turn of the Century, to the Ottoman Empire with its freedom of religion and to the tiny Anatolian town of Eskibahçe, ‘The Garden of Eden’.

In Eskibahçe, Turks, Greeks and Armenians live in relative peace. If the Imam’s wife felt that she had problems she ran to Philotei’s Mother a Greek.
‘Please pray to the Panagia for me...’ and without hesitation Philotei’s Mother says
‘Yes of course Sister’ rushing to make a small offering to the Panagia.

Like any other small town, Eskibahçe has all types of people, in addition to the multifarious races and creeds.
We have Iskander the Potter, who fashions bird-whistles, filling them with water, so that they gurgle and warble when played.
Iskander the Potter not only loves quotations, but makes up his own too...
'Man is a bird without wings, and a bird is a man without sorrows'

The two little friends, Karatavuk the Turk and Mehmetcik the Greek go about in red and black waistcoats, gurgling and warbling like birds, inseparable until war breaks out.
They are now, even as teenagers conscripted to fight this ‘Holy War’.
Karatavuk, participates in the battle of Gallipoli in the name Allah. Mehmetcik, is forced into a labour battalion because although an Ottoman, he cannot fight for his Motherland simply because he is a Greek Christian... sick to the pit of his stomach, he defects and becomes a notorious bandit.

From the day Philothei was born, everyone marveled at her beauty, but Beauty always comes at a price as Philothei realises when as a teenager every man old or young, could not take his eyes off her and Philotei has to wear a scarf to cover her face.
Philothei however, has eyes only for Ibrahim who even as a young boy followed Philotei everywhere. They are engaged to be married, with no impediment from either family for such marriages were common in Eskibahçe.
The War however, takes away their Joy...

Rustem Bey, the exceedingly handsome and rich landlord and town protector, tolerates his adulterous wife, Tamara Hanim, for a long time and then casts her out to be stoned enthusiastically by Muslims, as well Christians.
Feeling a certain loneliness he takes up a mistress, Layla who as time moves on loves him dearly, she later flees to Greece her homeland, that she had left such a long time ago.
Oh to speak in Greek, she exclaims, but weeps inconsolably when she writes Rustom Bey a farewell letter. These little round circles on her letter are tear drops realises Rustom Bey.

Abdulhamid Hodja, the Imam, who loves his horse Niloufer, talks to her, dresses her mane with little braids, ribbons and little bells. When the army takes Nilofer away, Abdulhamid Hodja dies slowly and sadly of a broken heart.

Father Kristoforos, depends on his meager congregation for sustenance, both holy men who call each other infidel, yet are good friends.

The various cultures, habits blend with each other and life in Eskibahçe is quite peaceful until the
War comes...

War the great Interrupter.

Just when things are going on quietly and peacefully, the lives of the inhabitants of Eskibahçe are torn apart by World War I, Turkey’s subsequent war with Greece, the Armenian genocide and the forced exile of Turkish Christians to Greece and of Muslim Greeks to Turkey.

War and carnage go hand in hand, the utter waste of lives, the brutality of the troops towards civilians in the name of religion and ethnic superiority is unbearable, summed up;

“In the long years of those wars there were too many who learned how to make their hearts boil with hatred, how to betray their neighbours, how to violate women, how to steal and dispossess, how to call upon God when they did the Devil’s work, how to enrage and embitter themselves, and how to commit outrages even against children. Much of what was done was simply in revenge for identical atrocities...”

In the end who was the better?

The Christians? The Muslims? They were just people in a barbaric war.

They went one better in committing atrocities; Christians butchered, maimed, raped and pillaged the Muslims.
The Muslims butchered, maimed, raped and pillaged the Christians, forever repeating the vicious cycle that is history repeating itself.

The Gallipoli campaign, commemorated by the ANZAC Day on 25 April 1915, as a national day to honour those who have served their country in World War I.

Strangely although bitter enemies ... after sometime the Turkish troops and the ANZACS share a strange comradeship, after all they share the same appalling hardships too, trenches filled with water, lice on every part of their bodies...hiding in every crevice, food gone bad and the thousands of soldiers dying not from war injuries but from diarrhea.
Strangely there is a growing fellowship and respect between the Turkish and the ANZACS. They start playing games; they tease each other, and as with all prolonged battles, bond with each other as well.

"Those heroes that shed their blood
And lost their lives.
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
And the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side
Here in this country of ours.
You, the mothers,
Who sent their sons from far away countries
Wipe away your tears,
Your sons are now lying in our bosom
And are in peace
After having lost their lives on this land they have
Become our sons as well."

The warm sentiments between Turkish and Australian nations were best voiced in the message of the Great Leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which was sent to the Australian and New Zealander mothers in 1934.
Taken from Wikipedia.

The Forced exodus of Armenians in 1915...
The subsequent Armenian genocide...
The expulsion of Greeks from Turkey and of Muslims from Greece after the signing of the “Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations” in 1923...
Is the History of Politicians, safely ensconced in their plush offices, drinking champagne, smoking cigars, huge maps on their walls with red flags indicating enemy positions, arbitrary treaties for the betterment of Nations, for ethnic cleansing.
The long marches with people displaced from their homes and countries where they had lived for centuries, leaving behind their comfortable homes, their gardens, their pets, their dead in cemeteries, for some unknown land where they would live with people of same ethnic origin, and who supposedly would speak their language.
People, women even pregnant ones, children, babies, marching in all types of weather, thousands upon thousands dying on the way, sometimes brutally murdered, raped, the carnage, the atrocities executed upon women and children, these are stories of common people in a War.

Who should we mourn for then?

Should'nt we mourn the brutality that Men of all faiths are capable of inflicting on their fellow Human beings?

For this is what War does...

Ένα επικό μυθιστόρημα που διαδραματίζεται στις αρχές του 20ου αιώνα με βασικούς πρωταγωνιστές τους Έλληνες, τους Τούρκους και τις Μεγάλες Δυνάμεις. Αυτά που διαβάζουμε προκαλούν και σοκάρουν. Θα πρέπει να έχετε ανοιχτό μυαλό γιατί πολλά από αυτά που γράφονται δεν είναι καθόλου κολακευτικά για τον λαό μας. Βέβαια, η Ιστορία, όπως τονίζει και ο συγγραφέας, είναι αμφιλεγόμενη.

Full review at Insta @vivliofreneia

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3NHOd0oc...

That rumbling sound just over the horizon is a stampede of giant novels set to arrive in a cloud of publicity. Pity the midlist author who pushes a new book into the path of this horde next month. To the extent Hollywood rises or falls on Thanksgiving weekend, publishers are concentrating more and more of their big literary novels in the fall, a self-destructive tendency sure to overwhelm the nation's shrinking body of readers (and newspaper book sections). If, as Calvin Trillin observed, the average shelf life of a book is somewhere between milk and yogurt, we're about to see some major spoilage.

That would be a shame because from the first novel to arrive this looks like a particularly good season. "Birds Without Wings," by Louis de Bernières, is a deeply rewarding work about the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. It's both exotically remote and tragically relevant in our age of confident nation-building.

As he did in his bestselling "Corelli's Mandolin" (1994), de Bernières roots his examination of the byzantine complexity of history in the life of a small town. For generations, Christians and Muslims have lived harmoniously in Eskibahçe, a fictional coastal village carved into a hillside in what we now call Turkey. The novel opens in 1900, on the eve of political and social calamities that no one could possibly imagine, least of all these simple folk, whose lives have more in common with 1500 than 1950.

One by one, they tell their stories - short, simple scenes that gradually cut new facets in the hard substance of world history. "With us there has been so much blood," Iskander the Potter says in the first paragraph, but it's easy to ignore that warning as he and his neighbors describe the everyday joys and trials of their lives as though these were the riffs of some Ottoman Garrison Keillor.

There's young Philothei, a Christian girl so beautiful she must wear a veil to quell quarrels in the town. And Ibrahim, her betrothed, who can "mimic the stupid comments of a goat in all its various states of mind." Karatavuk and Mehmetçik play among the hills, endlessly blowing their bird whistles and flapping their arms. The proud Christian priest accepts "offerings from Muslims who were anxious to hedge their bets with God by backing both camels." Ali the Snowbringer lives with his asthmatic donkey in the trunk of a tree. And Levon, the Armenian pharmacist, graciously helps the Muslim drunk who once assaulted him in the street.

These are often charming, even comic stories, but they're quickly forced to contend with stunning scenes of violence. "It is one of the greatest curses of religion," de Bernières writes, "that it takes only the very slightest twist of a knife tip in the cloth of a shirt to turn neighbors who have loved each other into bitter enemies."

That twist turns fathers against daughters and husbands against wives, slicing through ligaments of affection in one haunting chapter after another. With his presentation of this ecumenical community, de Bernières suggests that these eruptions of domestic violence - tragic as they are, motivated by pride and religious absolutism - can be controlled and minimized by the essential goodwill of reasonable people who know one another well.

But "Birds Without Wings" maintains a bifocal vision. One eye stays focused on the village, while the other sees nations foolishly slipping toward World War I. Among the scenes of life in little Eskibahçe, de Bernières interjects blood-soaked snapshots of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the chaotic ascension of Mustafa Kemal, the founder of modern Turkey. With wry disgust, he races through revolutions and counterrevolutions, massacres and deportations, the craven interference of European powers and their disastrous passivity, atrocities reflected endlessly in the mirror of revenge.

It's often difficult to follow the swift crosscurrents of this complex period, but de Bernières's thesis is strikingly clear: "History," he writes, "is finally nothing but a sorry edifice constructed from hacked flesh in the name of great ideas."

Eventually, of course, obscurity can protect Eskibahçe no longer. The rabid demands of fanatics who know nothing of this delicate town rain down upon it, fertilizing sectarian strife that these people had managed to hold in check for centuries. Again and again, we see the way reckless acts by vain leaders function as the flutterings of that proverbial butterfly that incites a hurricane far away. Friend is set against friend, neighbor against neighbor, always against their true will. With his unfailingly wise perspective, de Bernières notes, "The triple contagions of nationalism, utopianism and religious absolutism effervesce together into an acid that corrodes the moral metal of a race."

Karatavuk, one of the Muslim boys who played so happily with his Christian friend, takes us into the smoke of trench warfare with all its ghastly farce and startling moments of compassion. His burning faith in the jihad is slowly smothered by the senseless horrors he witnesses and commits. "It is only people like me," he writes, "who wonder why God does not do just one good miracle, and make the world perfect in an instant."

So much is remarkable about this novel, from the heft of its history to the power of its legends. In this great bazaar of family life and international politics, the bittersweet metaphor of "birds without wings" grows deeper and richer. The people of Eskibahçe are blessed with soaring aspirations, but like all of us they must live firmly on the ground, forced to cope with one another and the earthquakes of history. This epic about the tragedy of borders is likely to cross all borders, moving readers everywhere as it describes the harrowing cost of remaking faraway places in the image of our dreams.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0824/p1...

This took me one heck of a long time to read and there were many a moment where I thought I might have to give up (gets very detailed about Mustafa Kemal’s rise to power and let me tell you, he had a complicated journey). But I’m very glad I persevered because it’s really quite a brilliant book.

It talks mainly of the rural towns and peoples who are at the front line of a conflict instigated by distant, grandiose acts of nationalism. It is heartbreakingly sad.

I like this quote about planning for the future:
‘The present is confounded by the future, the future is confounded by the future beyond it, the memories bubble up in disorder, and the heart is unpredictable’