Listened to this on CD--think it is better that way, with excellent reader ( )

This novel of epic proportions is set in a small village in the Ottoman empire, on the brink of civil war. For generations, the peoples of the village have intermingled and intermarried. Even their religions have somewhat blended, with Muslims praying to the Christian saints, and Christians upholding some of the Muslims beliefs. It's a peaceful and quaint town that time has forgotten.

Soon great changes come to the region, in the way of war and destruction. The village and it's occupants realize that life, unfortunately, often changes even when you don't want it to.

I thought this book was extremely well written, and that the story very moving and sad. It's one of those books that really make you ponder just how unfair and random life can be. ( )

Louis de Bernieres is probably best known for his popular novel, Corelli's Mandolin, which I read and enjoyed several years ago. It was with this experience in mind that I anticipated reading this, his next novel, published in 2004. I was not disappointed. Birds Without Wings is more than a novel, it is several novels, a work of history and a biography of one of the leaders who remade the map of the twentieth century. It is this that makes it both an interesting book to read and a less successful book than it could have been. The stories are centered in a small village and resonate with today as lives are disrupted with displacement of both ethnic and religious groups as the society is forced into the future; our own present. I found the most dissatisfying aspect of Birds Without Wings was its massive size and the attempt of the author to do too much. The result is characters and events that are not always described with the depth necessary and deserving for the story. However, the book is excellent in its depiction of the time of the end of the Ottoman Empire, combining the beauty and nostalgia of the lives of people from small town Anatolia with the brutal sweep of the history of political movements and war encompassing the end of empire and the rise of Mustafa Kemal. The author tells each of these stories with a readable style that makes this book, while not without flaws, one that is easy to recommend. ( )

Set mostly in a village in what is now Turkey, 1900-1920 (or so), this tells the sad -- tragic -- story of community torn by world events. Interspersed with the tale of village life are chapters tracing the life of Mustafa Kemal, who became Ataturk. The chapters showing one of the young men from the village in the trenches at Gallipoli are powerful. At the beginning of the book, the village is diverse and tolerant -- the Muslims and Christians intermarry and everyone relies on the Armenian apothecary. But Armenian atrocities hundreds of miles away lead to the exile of the Armenians, most of whom die or are killed on their march. And at the end of the war, the powerful decide that all the Greeks in Turkey should be sent to Greece (even though they only speak Turkish) and all the Muslims in Greece should be sent to Turkey (even though they only speak Greek).

Beautifully written, but there's a lot that's disturbing.

For instance, even during the time before the ethnic violence, there is a horrible tale of young woman forced to marry despite being in love with another man. Later, when her husband catches the man in her room, he kills the man and drags the woman into the village square to be stoned. She's saved from death but lives out her days in a brothel, eventually crippled from syphilis.

The book has a connection to Corelli's Mandolin, another powerful book about village life and the horrors of war.

Book group. ( )