Louis de Bernires is the best-selling author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. His most recent novels are Birds Without Wings and A Partisan’s Daughter.
It is 1941 and Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to the Greek island of Cephallonia as part of the occupying forces. At first he is ostracised by the locals, but as a conscien-tious but far from fanatical soldier, whose main aim is to have a peaceful war, he proves in time to be civilised, humorous – and a consumate musician.
When the local doctor’s daughter’s letters to her fiance go unanswered, the working of the eternal triangle seems inevitable. But can this fragile love survive as a war of bestial savagery gets closer and the lines are drawn between invader and defender?
The well-loved, bestselling story of love, history and heroism Hypnotic…a vast tapestry woven in tiny, colourful, intricate detail…a graphic and moving commentary on the futility of war. this magical book stayed in my head long after I had finished it A wonderful epic novel…it has made him a name to conjure with. Both on the large and the small scale it is an absorbing and memorable book…the sweep, invention and warmth of the novel carries one effortlessly along Captain Corelli’s Mandolin achieves that rare feat of saying something new about war…fusing with remarkable felicity the cosmic and the tragic, the lyrical and the epic… And without offering easy answers, it poses difficult questions about love and suspicion, trust and betrayal, faith and despair, creativity and destruction Louis de Bernieres is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh…he has only to look into his world, one senses, for it to rush into reality, colours and touch and taste An emotional, funny, stunning novel which swings with wide smoothnes s between joy and bleakness, personal lives and history…it’s lyrical and angry, satirical and earnest