Hopefully, a proper review will follow in the next few days. One of those special novels that drew me in from the first page and kept me riveted until the very last. The characters became people I really did care about. I will think about them for a long time to come.

My top quotes from the novel:

“Man is a bird without wings and a bird is a man without sorrow.”

“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 have had enough of new things, and wish only for the long sleep that rounds the edges of our lives”.

The second quote sounds depressing but when spoken by the character Isklander the Potter, it is not. Rather you understand his assessment of life for him now, after the wars, after he has accidently maimed his son, after he has seen his village plundered and changed forever.

De Bernieres has that extra special gift in storytelling. A huge thank-you to Chrissie in the All About Books group for her fantastic review which lead me to read this unforgettable novel. Most Highly Recommended. 4.5★

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

This, for me, is one of those rare and treasured reads, a book that will stay with me forever. It tells the story of a small village in Smyrna starting about 1900, before it became Turkey. It is divided into many short chapters, and is told mostly in the third person. Sprinkled throughout, though, are chapters told from the point of view of several of the villagers, some of whom we meet as children, while others merely recount events from their young lives from the perspective of mature adults.

I loved this book because I loved the people who inhabited it, and the author made me feel that I know them. More than that, though, he made me feel he knows me. This was my first experience with Louis de Bernieres, but it won't be my last.

I am no history buff, so the description scared me off a little. I wasn't sure if I would understand it. Then I took a look at the first page, and the writing pulled me in immediately. Here is the start of the second paragraph:

n  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. n

How can you not read a book that starts with such wisdom, such truth and eloquence? I couldn't resist. This is a wise book, full of humor. You'll need the humor, because there is also great tragedy here. The characters feel very real. It's about life, the good, bad and ugly. We get to know the village and its people, its customs, superstitions, and traditions. It's about strength and courage and beauty and friendship. It's about community and family, and war's far-reaching, often devastating effects.

I started with a library copy, then bought the book halfway through because I knew I would want to reread this, and I'd want to be able to lend it out. I'd also like to highly recommend the audiobook, narrated by John Lee. He is a gifted narrator. His inflections and delivery, in my opinion, are perfect for the prevailing tongue-in-cheek tone of the story.

I feel as though I should have taken notes as I read, because I don't feel I'm doing this book enough justice here. I would really like to revisit this in a few years, once I have a better understanding of WWI. You really don't need the historical background going in to be able to enjoy the book. Trust me, I had almost none. However, I already want to reread it. Next time, with the background, I know I will appreciate it even more.

I also want to thank my good friend Chrissie for encouraging me to read this, in spite of the fact that I was unfamiliar with the history. What a tremendous book. I feel that it has been stitched into my soul, a rare treasure.

The premise of this book was promising—a portrait of Turks, Greeks, and Armenians from an early 20th century Anatolian town before and during the collapse of their world—but its style took some getting used to. Chapters are short, episodic, and disjointed, rotating points of view among the large cast of characters. Although the protagonists evolve, there is no central tension driving the narrative, making an already lengthy book seem longer.

Then there are the politics. Louis de Bernières relates many key events of the Balkan Wars and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire through a prism that many will find objectionable. He condemns all violence and nationalistic extremism (kudos), but he does not assign responsibility equally, blaming Turkish nationalists largely on Greek nationalists while eulogizing the imperialist regime the latter reacted against. Although he acknowledges the atrocities of the Armenian genocide, he again absolves the governing regime of any real responsibility for it. I could go on, but you get the point. As someone with roots in these conflicts, who has known survivors and children of survivors, I find it difficult to take such commentary lying down.

Why then the four stars? Because although de Bernières’s interpretations may rankle, I’d like to believe his is just one perspective on a history that admits many perspectives. Because although his writing style requires some adjustment, it is downright enjoyable once you get into its rhythm. And most of all because the human stories he weaves are fascinating in a way that only distant worlds can be fascinating, and poignant in a way that only extreme experiences can be poignant. Vignettes of daily life—the ritual exhumation of the dead, the purchase of a mistress—combine with moments of real drama—a rescue from a death march, a descent into madness—to leave me at a loss for words; all I could articulate for weeks was, “Oh, the humanity!”

I can’t remember where I bought this book or even how long it has sat on my shelves, but what a lovely surprise it was. There was no synopsis or description on the cover so I truly went into knowing nothing.
It’s a beautiful story about the ending of the Ottoman Empire and the lives of those in a small village in the countryside navigating these monumental changes.
An amazing story about humanity, humor, and love.

One of the GoodReads groups I am in, The World's Literature, is focusing on literature from and about Turkey this year. Birds Without Wings was one of the February picks (discussion will end up here,) and even though I started it a while ago, it took me staying up until 2 am this morning to get through it.

This is an incredibly well-executed novel. The author tells the story of Turkey in the early 20th century, from its development from the Ottoman Empire or Anatolia, into a time where the people living there embraced the word Turk, Turkish, Turkey (prior to that change, it had been a pretty derogatory term.) This is the second book I've read this year to include Mustafa Kemal, but while the other book focused on his violent acts from an outsider perspective, Birds Without Wings entwines his story from youth to Atatürk, and explains his pivotal role in where the country is now. It is done rather without judgment, just the facts. Well, I'm not sure. The Armenians are removed and the Christians are removed and the violence surrounding it is implied but not focused on.

The core of the story isn't Mustafa Kemal, however. It focuses on the people living in a small village where people speak Turkish written in a Greek alphabet, where friendships cross religious and ethnic lines, but war and governmental change creates conflict in all those areas. It is a sad but true transformation from tolerance to division. The story is told from multiple perspectives, from Iskander the Potter to the mistress of the wealthiest man in town. The writing is dense, filled with local color, and goes by quickly with the changing perspectives.

The author's opinion is clear throughout the novel, mourning the past where different people could live together in the days of the Ottoman Empire. This quotation sums up a great deal of the tone of the book:

"It was said in those days one could hear seventy languages in the streets of Istanbul. The vast Ottoman Empire, shrunken and weakened though it now was, had made it normal and natural for Greeks to inhabit Egypt, Persians to settle in Arabia and Albanians to live with Slavs. Christians and Muslims of all sects, Alevis, Zoroastrians, Jews, worshipers of the Peacock Angel, subsisted side by side and in the most improbable places and combinations. There were Muslim Greeks, Catholic Armenians, Arab Christians and Serbian Jews. Istanbul was the hub of this broken-felloed wheel, and there could be found epitomised the fantastical bedlam and babel, which, although no one realised it at the time, was destined to be the model and precursor of all the world's great metropoles a hundred years hence, by which Istanbul would, paradoxically, have lost its cosmopolitan brilliance entirely. It would be destined, perhaps, one day to find it again, if only the devilish false idols of nationalism, that specious patriotism of the morally stunted, might finally be toppled in the century to come."

I so wish that the editor had been a bit more stringent with this book so that more people would read it! Even adoring the book as I did, I found I would have preferred it with one or two fewer plot lines. It is an incredibly historically informational novel peopled with (a few too many) warmly flawed and incredibly real characters.
I think the author's ability to provide a variety of viewpoints (via the different Muslim, Catholic, Turkish and Greek characters we meet) on a time period that is hotly debated even today makes this a book that should be required reading for all Americans.

This is a stunning, engrossing, mind bending work of historical fiction that left me spellbound at the end of its 550 pages. It tells the story of the Great Exchange between the Turks and the Greeks after WWI. This event was one of the greatest disasters in history. But the story starts before that. It not only covers the Gallipoli War during WWI and introduces Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the brilliant founder of modern-day-Turkey, who led the Ottoman Turks to victory against the Allies, but it also follows the Greco-Turkish war. During this war, Smyrna, present day Izmir, the city that I was born in, was burned down. This is a great tragedy because it was one of the most cosmopolitan and popular cities of its times.

Soon after this horrible event, politicians of both countries executed an even worse happening— the Great Exchange, a crazy idea of nationalism whereby all Muslims living in Greece (who considered themselves Greek) had to return to Turkey and all Christians living in Turkey had to return to Greece. Before this population exchange, the Greeks and Turks were so intertwined that some Turks even wrote Turkish with Greek letters. My grandfather who lived during that time had a close Christian neighbor who offered him all his property before he was forced to leave. The effect of this mass exchange was devastating and over a million people lost their homes and their lives as they knew it.

The Greeks and the Turks are still so intertwined. At the Aegean beach town where I spent my summers, you can see the storefronts of the Greek island Chios. And we hear Greek radio because we are so close. My own grandfather was from Crete and then came over to Cyprus, an island that inhabits both Greeks and Turks.

I highly recommend this to my fellow historical novel lovers and especially to my Greek and Turkish friends and those that love Turkey!

Tracing the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of the modern republic of Turkey, this novel alternates the first and third person narratives of a range of characters from the fictional town of Eskibahçe (meaning Garden of Eden) in southwest Turkey with an account of the life of Mustafa Kemal, later Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first leader of modern Turkey.

At the turn of the 20th century, the inhabitants of Eskibahçe comprise Muslim Turks, Christians of Greek origin and Armenians. They live together in relative harmony, forming friendships and inter-marrying. Both Christians and Muslims hedge their bets somewhat, with Muslims asking their Christian friends to offer prayers of intercession and Christians having a profound respect for the local imam. The lives of the inhabitants of Eskibahçe are torn apart by World War I and Turkey’s subsequent war with Greece, together with the Armenian genocide and the forced exile of Turkish Christians to Greece and of Muslim Greeks to Turkey.

In beautiful and accessible prose, de Bernières creates a strong sense of time and place. I found the chapters dealing with the Gallipoli campaign particularly powerful. The story of this WWI campaign is well-known to Australians and New Zealanders, who commemorate the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 as a national day to honour those who have served their country in time of war. It was extremely moving to read an account of the campaign – including an account of the fellowship and respect which grew between the Turkish and the Australian and New Zealand soldiers – from a Turkish point of view. The account of the forced exodus of Armenians in 1915 (and the subsequent Armenian genocide, which in terms of the novel occurs “off-stage”) and that of 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 are also powerful and moving.

It took me a while to become completely engaged with the characters and the narrative. This is a long novel and de Bernières introduces his characters and builds tension slowly. While there is plenty of humour – a lot of it sardonic - the work is a serious indictment of extreme nationalism, of religious dogma and of war and its atrocities. However, it also explores human resilience and the type of love and friendship which can survive even the horror of war and ethnic and religious conflict . In a sense, Eskibahçe represents a Turkey in which different religious and ethnic communities could live in harmony before the choice to do so was taken away from them. And the tragic love story of the Muslim boy Ibrahim and the Christian girl Philotei which forms part of the narrative represents the tragedy which befell Greek Christians expelled from Turkey to a land which was not their own. In the process of describing the devastation on which this novel centres, de Bernières does not spare himself in criticising those he considers responsible for what occurred.

Before I started reading the novel, I was reasonably familiar with the political situation in Turkey since the 1980s. By reading it I learned a lot about the beginnings of modern Turkey and was able to put what I already knew into historical context. This is not an easy novel to read. However, it made me both laugh and cry and for a patient reader with an interest in 20th century international relations, the novel is a rewarding literary experience. Thanks to my GR friend Chrissie for recommending it to me.

I read this book with a small group of ten friends who read one book/month and meet in each other's homes on rotation. Everyone in the group except my partner Bob and I liked this book--we both hated it. De Bernieres is a talented writer at the language level, but for a book that seemed to pride itself on duplicating the voices of numerous characters from their youth to adulthood, covering different ethnicities, genders, and religious affiliation, I did not find any character that could be expanded to much more than a skeleton with a motif pinned to it. An omniscient narrator interspersed his/her observations with first-person accounts, but there was never a sense of whom the audience might be for the first-person narrators, and the omniscient narrator included a lot of clumsy exposition and versions of events throughout that were contradictory.

The novel wants to be an historical fiction set in the time period when Turkey becomes a nation at the end of the Ottoman Empire, but the history seemed heavily slanted toward Turkish nationals. I never quite trusted the narrator, which I would think is of importance in historical fiction.

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.

في إحدى قرى الجنوب الغربي لتركيا، وتحديداً قرية "إسكي بهتشه" -وهي من وحي خيال المؤلف- حيث سيتخذ منها الكاتب مسرحاً لروايته التاريخية هذه. وربما السبب في ذلك هو عدم الوقوع في فخ سرد أحداث قد لا تكون حقيقية بالنسبة لمكان بعينه، وأيضاً ليمنح نفسه فرصة الإبحار بمخيلته في أرض لم يعرف عن أهلها الكثير، سوى الحكايات التي سمعها من الناس أثناء بحثه لكتابة روايته تلك. قد يبدو من حديثي أني متحفز نحو الكاتب والرواية، ولكن دعني أوضّح لك في نقاط بسيطة ما وصلت إليه من قرائتي تلك.

يبدأ الفصل الأول من الرواية على لسان "إسكندر الفواخرجي" وهو يستعيد الذكريات حول قريته وكم كانت الحياة جميلة ورائعة رغم قلة الموارد، ولكن كان هناك أُلفة بين المسلمين والمسيحيين من أهل البلدة. وهذه النقطة تحديداً سيتحدث عنها الكاتب فيما بعد وهو يحكي عن التهجير وتبادل السكان الأتراك واليونانيين الذي صاحب "معاهدة لوزان". وأيضاً يحكي لنا إسكندر عن حكاية "إبراهيم المجنون" وحبه لـ "فيلوثي" والتي سنعرف حكايتها بالتفصيل على لسانها أيضاً فيما بعد، فالكاتب هنا جعل من روايته رواية متعددة الأصوات بدلاً من سردها على لسان راوي واحد. ربما يكون قد نجح إلى حدِ ما في سرد الحكايا من وجهة نظر أصحابها، ولكنه لم يستطع أن يوظّف أسلوب الراوي العليم -الذي استخدمه- بصورة جيدة كما سيتضح لنا مع توالي الفصول.

على الرغم من كثرة الشخصيات التي ذكرها الكاتب في روايته واستخدامه عدة رواة، لكن يمكنني بسهولة تحديد خطين متوازيين تسير فيهما الرواية. الأول وهو قرية "إسكي بهتشه وسكانها"، والخط الثاني هو "قصة صعود مصطفى علي رضا أفندي" الذي سيُصبح فيما بعد "مصطفى كمال أتاتورك" ديكتاتور تركيا الأول. وكما ذكرت مسبقاً فالكاتب هنا يُريد أن يوضح الحالة التي كانت عليها تركيا والتي اصبحت عليها فيما بعد بعد توالي الأحداث وظهور "أتاتورك"، لا أعلم إذا كنت محقاً في ظني هذا أن للكاتب ميول خاصة لإظهار السلام والتآلف بين الناس وهم "عثمانليون" وحالة التنافر والاستنكار التي أصبحوا عليها فيما بعد وهم "أتراك".

وبالنظر إلى بناء الرواية، فأراها "مفككة" حيث يمكن تقسيم الرواية إلى ثلاثة أجزاء أو بالأحرى إلى ثلاثة روايات دون التأثير على أي منها. دعني أوضح لك وجهة نظري بطريقة سهلة، في الثلث الأول من الرواية يحكي لنا عن سكان القرية وربما سنقرأ الجزء الأكثر متعة في الرواية كلها، وهي قصة "رستم بك" والتي ستعيد إلى خاطرنا "ليالي ألف ليلة وليلة" والتشابه بينهما من حيث الحبكة وأسلوب السرد. وفي الثلث الثاني من الرواية نجد الكاتب يحكي فيها عن "حملة جاليبولي" وما صاحبها من وصف للمعارك وحالة الجند والصور التي وصفها الكاتب للمعارك، والتي تذكرني بشكل كبير برواية الألماني "إريك ريمارك" والتي كانت تدور أحداثها أيضاً في زمن الحرب العالمية الأولى بإختلاف الجبهة التي تدور في رحاها الحرب. ��لمميز في هذا الجزء هو وصف الكاتب لمشهد الخراب الذي حلّ بالقرية بسبب أخذ كل الرجال الذي باستطاعتهم الإمساك بالسلاح، ليتركوا البلدة خاوية لا فيها من يزرع الأرض أو يقيم شئون الناس. وهو المشهد تحديداً الذي استطاع "شولوخوف" أن يحفره بذاكرتي بروايته الأسطورية تلك. وفي النهاية، سيتبقى لنا الثلث الأخير الذي يوضح فيه ما آلت إليه الأمور بعد كل تلك الأحداث الدموية التي صاحبت الحرب والإتفاقيات التي وُقعت وشرّدت الكثير من أوطانهم بسبب الدِين أو العِرق.

في النهاية، لا أود أن أقول خاب أملي مع الرواية، حيث كنت أنتظر منها المزيد حول أتاتورك وتلك الفترة التي صاحبت انهيار الدولة العثمانية، ولكن سأكتفي بالقول أني خرجت بعدة نقاط أفادتني بالبحث عنها. وهذه من مزايا الرواية التاريخية، فليس من الضروري أن يكون كل شيء فيها حقيقي وموثق، ولكن بالضرورة ستفتح لك أبواباً للبحث والقراءة.

شاركتني في قراءة الرواية الأستاذة فاطمة محمدي، واستمتعت بالحديث معها حول الرواية وتبادل الآراء حول كل ما جاء فيها.