Birds Without Wings (Vintage International)

War and Peace, Turkish Rendition “Man is a bird without wings and a bird is a man without sorrows.” As a history lesson, what you learn is The word “Ottoman” would fall into disuse and disrepute until such time as the inevitable revisions of later days, when the world would realize that the Ottoman Empire had been cosmopolitan tolerant. This book for me is a continuation of my explorations into Turkish culture. It is the Turkish version of War and Peace. Though there is no relation in storyline or time period the book essentially follows the same format as Tolstoy in describing family and village life and the effects war has on peace. The setting is a sleepy town on the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea called Esckbece. The town is now called Ismir. The time period for the main storyline, told from many different character views, covers the demise of the Ottoman Empire approximately the turn of the 20th century through the Turkish revolution. Any review of the book cannot pin exact dates because of the anachronistic style of storytelling. The main story teller is an old woman of whom the author, a man, captures “the old woman” persona perfectly. She owns a witty sense of humor in detailing the ironies of the cultural clashes that undermined the Ottoman ability to keep up with and then defend against the Imperialism of the Western powers. The clashes involve; Islam-v-Christianity, Armenian-v-Turk, Eastern Anatolia-v-Bulgaria, Greek-v-Ottoman, western fashion-v-Ottoman fashion, the colorful life of a Christian-v-the grey life of a Muslim. In Esckabece, while there were differences that each would gossip about, there was an inbred kinship where the common denominator was Ottoman. The first half of the book portrays a time of peace where the clashes are take on the spirit of gossip amongst women at the well and men in for coffee houses. It seemed that the gossip was primarily from the women, while the men pursued their goals of work and the game of backgammon. To describe it in general terms, the Christians from Bulgaria and Greece were colorful with a Christian holiday being celebrated with drunken hooliganism almost every day. In the balance, the Muslims lived a bland and disciplined day to day life. While the women would gossip, ironically each had a best friend from “the other religion.” In my personal experience living in Manhattan I observed this blend of multiculturalism. New Yorkers love each other in their way, the same way Ottomans did in 1910. They were Ottomans first, and their religion came in second…tied for first. I think that is a Yogi Bearism. Blended into the story is the life of Mustafa Kemel later known as Ataturk, the first President of Turkey, and the George Washington of Turkey. Kemel’ mindset came from western Ottoman, but was clearly of Turkish mindset holding one exception. The Turkey he envisioned needed to get into the 20th Century. Turkey needed to adopt the ways of the West. This included education, custom, government structure, and even dress code. Kemel liked to enjoy life. But he also was a Muslim and respected its discipline. He rose through the ranks with a lot of conflict with his superiors. He disagreed with the strategy of his superiors. Where the military political agendas merged with the political parties, he was of his own mind. Blending the Ataturk story with the personal saga of those small lives in Eskabece gives the book of a sense of authentic history and a real human level. The book is clearly a history novel on par with anything that Michener. The war element describes WWI and the Turkish Revolution from an Ottoman’s perspective. This setting could not be complete without dragging into it the eighty years the preceded it. Boyhood friends would be conscripted in to the Ottoman army either as a soldier for Muslims or a civil engineer for Christians to support the war effort. The life of either left each totally altered as a human being. While they endured the horrors and atrocities of war, their families endured the famines that war bestowed upon them. The Muslim-v-Christian divide tore through Eskabece as ethnic groups were exported to various new countries, and many massacred along the way, according to the new religious orientation. Ironically when the town’s folk were forced to leave, they would ask why. Their masters would say because you are Christian or Muslim. They would say, ‘but I am Ottoman and this is my home.” Their dear Muslim friends would concur and then cry at the departure of their Christians. Today as I do business in Turkey I now benefit from reading this book. I already love the people and the country. I now better understand the Turkish history that formulates their mindset. I can see the mix of the Christian colorful life upon a very clear straight forward Muslim people. The lines are delineated and casually crossed at the same time. Women do not wear burkas but some do wear babushkas with little or no make up. But it is not uncommon to observe at a bus stop one generation of woman dressed in a classic double breasted rain coat and babushka standing next to a very attractive young woman wearing ‘western yoga pants’ (speaking of contradiction) and a T-shirt. The men… they still play backgammon, they still smoke huka. And so do the women. Turkey is clearly a first world 21st Century country of predominate Western life style. But they have kept the best of East-West, old-new. They are one of the most enjoyable people I’ve come to know firsthand. This book is the bridge they crossed. My bibliography is 15 pages that captures the culture of the Ottoman Empire as it evolved to a Turkish nation ready to be a world leader. Keyword cigarroomofbooks and enjoy the history lesson.

Louis de Bernieres intertwines his beautiful narrative of a small Anatolian town and the lives of its inhabitants with that of the biography of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder and first president of the Turkish Republic. "Birds Without Wings" is superb historical fiction which chronicles the rise of Turkish nationalism, following the horrific massacres of Armenians and Muslims in the 19th and early 20th century. Similar ethnic and religious mass murders occurred in the Balkans, and other such slaughters were perpetrated by the Russians in their vast territory. Refugees fled in droves into the Ottoman Empire, to life in exile, trying to escape the killing fields. The destruction of the Ottoman empire in WWI put an end to a tradition of religious and ethnic tolerance in Asia Minor, areas of the Balkans, and many Arab countries. De Bernieres also takes the reader to the battlefields of various wars, revolutions and counterrevolutions, and portrays the Battle of Gallipoli from the Turkish point of view - although I don't think he captures the true extent of the horrors of Gallipoli. De Bernieres' dedicates his novel to: "....the unhappy memory of the millions of civilians on all sides during the times portrayed, who had become victims of the numerous death marches, movements of refugees, campaigns of persecution and extermination, and exchanges of population." Karatavuk, now an old man and the town scribe, remembers his childhood when he spent almost all his time running free with his beloved friend, Mehmetcik. Of course they both had to spend time at home with family and/or working, but there was always plenty of opportunity to play and adventure. Mehmetcik is a Christian and has long since been deported, with all the other non-Muslims, from his home in the former Anatolian town of Eskibahce, a fictional coastal village carved into a hillside in southwestern Turkey. The refugees were shipped to Greece, to live as strangers amongst strange people who called them Turks, in spite of their shared Greek Orthodox religion.They were transplanted to replace the Greek Muslims, who were transported from Greece to Eskibahce, which was part of the former Ottoman Empire but now belongs to Turkey. In the old days Christian, Muslim, Armenian and Jew lived together in Eskibahce, in relative harmony. Everyone spoke Turkish. Christians learned the Greek alphabet in order to read and write Turkish with Greek letters. Muslims learned to recite the first few lines of the Koran in Arabic, but otherwise remained illiterate. Mehmetcik taught his Muslim friend to read Turkish in Greek, making letters and words in the dirt with a stick, thus enabling him to become a scribe when his arm was crippled by a gun shot. Karatavuk and Mehmetcik are not the boys' real names. Karatavuk's real name is Abdul, Mehmetcik's is Nicos. Iskander the Potter made them terra cotta whistles in the shape of birds. These whistles are extremely special and unique. When half filled with water and blown, they sound like the bird they resemble. Abdul, Iskander's son, received the karatavuk, a completely black bird with a yellow beak which makes a "vuk, vuk, vuk sound in the oleander tree and sings to praise God in the evening." Thus Abdul, who whistled and flapped his arms much of the time, fancifully trying to make them function as wings, got his nickname. Nicos received a smaller but beautiful bird whistle also - the mehmetcik, "sometimes called kizilgerdan, and sometimes the fire-nightingale." He too became more than proficient in making the bird song. Iskander warned them both, " Man is a bird without wings, and a bird is a man without sorrow." Now Karatavuk remembers his old friend and happier days, so long ago. He writes his memories in a letter to Mehmetcik, which the man will never receive, even if he is still alive. No one knows where he is. Karatavak writes that he misses him, even now that his eyes have dimmed and he has grown old. He tells of people they cared for so much and who are long gone from Eskibahce, killed in wars, displaced to God knows where, murdered by ethnic cleansing: wealthy Aga Rustem Bey and his beautiful, mysterious Circassian mistress, Leyla Hanim, who was not Circassian at all; Abdulhamid Hodja, the local imam, who was friend and wise man to Muslim and Christian alike, and came to bless Philothei, a Christian, when she was born; Ayse, the imam's wife and a good woman, who once asked her Christian friend to light a candle before the icon of the Virgin - just in case; Father Kristoforos, who encouraged the Muslims to enter his church on holy days when the religious figures honored by both Christianity and Islam were celebrated. The priest also accepted "offerings from Muslims who were anxious to hedge their bets with God by backing both camels;" Veled the Fat who gave his camel cigarettes to smoke; Ali the Snowbringer and his family who lived in a hollow tree; the Dog; the Blasphemer; Ali the Broken-Nosed; Stamos the Birdman; Mohammad the Leech Gatherer; Charitos and Polyxeni, parents of Mehmetcik, and tragic Philothei the Beautiful; Drosoula the Ugly, best friend of Philothei; Sadettin who was forced to kill his sister and then ran away to be a bandit; and Ibrahim the Mad. He also remembers Firket from Pera, and other war comrades - all of them gone. He remembers when, as boys, they fancied themselves to be birds, and were happy even when they fell. He was a robin, Mehhetcik a blackbird. But in reality they were birds without wings. "For birds with wings nothing changes; they fly where they will and they know nothing about borders and their quarrels are very small...But men are confined to earth...and because we cannot fly, we are condemned to do things which do not agree with us. Because we have no wings, we are pushed into struggles and abominations we did not seek." Unlike his other novels, especially my favorite, "Corelli's Mandolin," the author introduces and sets in motion a huge cast of characters, who are restricted in their development as a consequence of their large number. They are remembered most for one or two salient characteristics, sometimes charming, occasionally comic, and, as time passes, more and more heartbreaking. Although this device works, and is effective in an epic tale of this proportion, I found something significant lacking here. I wanted to become more intimate with some of the personages - to find out more about them, their thoughts and dreams. This is impossible in "Bird's Without Wings," because as in real life, these figures are as grains of sand in the scheme of world events. "History," de Bernieres writes, "is finally nothing but a sorry edifice constructed from hacked flesh in the name of great ideas." This book is extremely powerful and pertinent now, given global current events, especially the last few years in the Balkans, Middle East, and former USSR. On the down side, although one cannot help but be caught up in de Bernieres' lyrical prose and a storyline packed with adventure, joy and so much sorrow - this novel is too long at 554 pages, 95 chapters, a six part Epilogue and a Postscript. Although I really found it difficult to put the novel down, it is nowhere as fluid or as accessible as "Corelli's Mandolin." Nor is the narrative as passionate. I do highly recommend "Birds Without Wings" as it still makes for excellent reading! "There is no greater sorrow on earth than the loss of one's native land." --Euripides-- JANA

I found this book as I wanted to learn more about Turkey. What a tour de force! I loved the pacing of the book with short chapters that develop each of the characters. The writing about the wars was powerful and rich. This was balanced with the simple beauty of the village. The characters are handled with great care and honesty. The book flows well and reads easily. The author did sometimes use words I found a bit obscure but with kindle just tap to get a definition and you are good. This is truly a beautiful and unique book. I highly recommend it.

From page one this book grabbed me and, to be honest, I don't know how else to put it other than it is just a beautiful, lovely read, though the subject matter is anything but. This book was simply a pleasure to read, and on several nights I was absorbed till the wee hours. Beautiful story-telling, beautiful language. I completely disagree with reviews that complain that De Bernieres overused "persian/arabic/urdu terms" - many of the words will already be familiar even to a casual reader of Middle East-themed literature and all such terms are very understandable, especially in the context of the story. I disagree even more with statements that the book offers no story to tell as I would consider this book a great example of history-based fiction. No, this is not necessarily the book if you want to know more details about the history and demise of the Ottoman Empire -- but that's because it's not a history textbook! This is a story (yes, a fictional one) of regular people living through incredible times, of how significant world events impact arguably insignificant small lives. And this book definitely does one thing most history textbooks fail to do - get one interested in the subject matter enough to go out and read more about it. And no, this book is not about how awesome the Ottoman Empire was or how the Ottoman Muslims never did anything wrong. Numerous parts of the book discuss the disagreements about the "holy war" among various Muslim populations; there are several examples of depraved actions perpetrated by Muslims against each other and against other religious groups; a few Muslim groups are portrayed as downright evil hypocrites. There's is no single protagonist, either Muslim or Christian -- instead it's the whole community that has changed forever, individually and collectively, and not for the better, that has lost everything in every meaning of that word. And it is this cataclysmic change and this crushing loss that make one's heart ache when reading this book. Many, many parts struck me as so profound, I found myself highlighting many more passages in this book than probably in any other book I've read. Most of those passages are simply about living your own life and letting others do the same, about tolerance toward each other, about the evils of nationalism-driven conflicts, no matter who the perpetrators are, and reminders that the sweetness of vengeance, if any, is extremely short-lived as one may find himself forever haunted by the memories of brutalities personally committed. If this book is indeed a love letter to anything (as some reviews have suggested), it is to the idea of tolerance, idealistic and unrealistic as it may seem.

The best way that I know to go about tackling a review for this book is to break it down into pros and cons. Here we go! Pros: It is beautiful written with a very elegant and seductive prose at times. The way in which the author knows the depth of woman's heart and soul is incredible. The book has very strong and wise women that are good wives and mothers. The characters were very realistic. He did a great job of keeping to the "true character" of so many different characters throughout the book. The richness of mixing politics, religion, war, history, and love was paramount (although some reviewers did not believe he was historically accurate). Cons I typically don't like a book with an anbundance of characters to follow. There were too many characters for me personally to keep up with. There were a handful of characters that I actually grew to know and like in the book. I also think that the book was rather long. Not being a history buff myself, it was harder for me to follow along when De Bernieres gotten so heavily into the politics and history of Turkey. Overall it is a unique and beautiful book. I would recommend it to other readers who have the time to devote to a 553 page book and can piece together all the weaving that De Bernieres does so beautifully. "

This novel is told on two levels. It is the story of a small town in Anatolia pre-WW1 through the post war expulsion of its Christian citizens. It is also the story of the political context. The levels are linked by the impact of the politics on the town, and more personally by the experience of one of its inhabitants fighting during the Gallipoli campaign. The story of the town is told mainly through the many voices of its inhabitants, with warmth, humor, and acceptance of human foibles, while not white washing some of the less savory aspects. A Greek Christian boy convinces his Moslem Turkish friend to teach him reading and writing. The friend remarks: "I’m warning you I’ve got to hit you on the head and call you bad names when you’re stupid, because that’s how you do teaching.” On the other hand, “There was not a single one of those there who would not have helped Levon (an Armenian) if they had found him injured by the side of the road, but as a mob they were individually not a wit superior to hyenas.” The Turkish inhabitants do help their Greek friends when they are expelled, after WWI, being marched to the nearest town. The political context is told through the voice of the narrator and it is one of outrage. “There was between 1821 and 1913 a prolonged and atrocious holocaust which we have chosen to forget”, with atrocities, expulsions, death marches on both sides, although the author emphasizes those against “Muslim, Jewish and Turkish civilians”. The narrator particularly singles out Kurds and Bulgarians for opprobrium. At times he goes further than to simply put what is accepted as the Armenian genocide into context. “In 1915 the number (Armenians who died on forced march) was thought to be 300,000, a figure which has been progressively increased ever since, thanks to the efforts of angry propagandists.” Perhaps surprisingly, it all adds up to a well-integrated, informative and enjoyable reading experience.

This is certainly one of the saddest books I've ever read. I mean sad in that it depicts all the barbarity, kindness, love, hate, absurdity and compassion of which humans are capable and leaves one with the still, sad music of humanity tolling in one's ears. It is a haunting read, if one perseveres to the end. I add this conditional because I can easily see why a reader may want to give up, say, two hundred or so pages into it. Though De Bernieres is a masterful narrator, particularly at descriptive passages of everything from rolling landscapes to the details of almost unimaginable brutality, the writing itself is not particularly poetic or stylistic. And when one finishes reading a very detailed introduction and description of the manners and affect of a (supposedly) Circassian odalisque, it might not seem worth the effort But please go on: Because, immediately after these languorous passages comes the most riveting writing of the book in the form of Karatavuk's accounts of Gallipoli. That this is the most captivating part of the book is hardly surprising. The Dedication mentions De Bernieres' maternal grandfather who was wounded at Gallipoli while serving with the Royal Naval Division (a detachment of Navy foot-soldiers created by Churchill because, at the time, there were simply more sailors than ships which they could man). I don't quite how to describe these passages except by saying that you won't be able to put the book down when reading them, and that they contain everything a soldier won't talk about when he comes home from a war. The rest of the novel, to put it pointedly, becomes increasingly more dismal. If there is a music to this novel, it is akin to the long howl of a wolf in a desolate place. Loved ones become sundered, minds become deranged, peoples dislocated. Some find their quietus suddenly. Others linger sorrowfully. I can't quite make out the historical accuracy fuss. De Bernieres repeatedly declaims the evils of nationalism from first to last here, and there is enough brutality and bloodshed for all. Those quibbling in the other reviews about this sort of thing remind one of some of the more petty characters described herein. In the end, one is left with "that weariness of someone who knows that they have lived too long, and which can come upon a person at any age." For, "The present is confounded by the future, the future is confounded by the future beyond it, and the memories bubble up in disorder, and the heart is unpredictable."

I'm an expat and I've lived in Turkey for the past two years. The longer that I reside in this fascinating country, I find that understanding Turkey is a complex and difficult task. So many aspects of its' culture and history have simply not been told to Western audiences. So, many kudos to Mr. de Bernieres for writing not only a beautifully written novel but one that is incredibly informative. In the end, the reader is not only treated to characters that are flawed, but are written with true emotional depth; but you also learn about the tragedy of the Greek/Turkish "exchange." You receive both a political/historical lesson and you're treated to some darn good story-telling. The pace of his writing may strike some as rather slow paced. But this is a book that rewards the patient reader. De Bernieres carefully sets the stage with lengthy character development and his pacing reflects that of village life in early 20th Century Turkey. It is a unique achievement and he has a writing style that is uniquely his own. This book is definitely recommended to anyone interested in Turkish history and the misery that the end of the Ottoman Empire inflicted on the world. It should appeal to anyone who appreciates a work of literary value, yet balances this with historical fact.

Je viens de relire ce livre que j'avais lu un peu vite la première fois car je voulais le finir. A la deuxième lecture j'en ai mieux apprécié le tour de force qu'il représente de présenter à la fois les événements historiques des conséquences du traité de Lausanne et le "vécu" des villageois dont la plupart ne rentre dans aucune des catégories que l'on voudrait leur appliquer. Les mots "grecs" ou "turcs" ont tellement de significations différentes à ce moment-là que le bouleversement qui s'opère est cataclysmique . L'auteur montre également comment la violence s'installe entre les communautés de façon terrifiante car on comprend quels peuvent être les griefs qui motivent ce réactions. Un livre qui ne s'oublie pas.

Magnífica historia para entender el desmembramiento del imperio otomano y la casi actual disposición de los Balcanes, también queda bien reflejado la variedad étnica y cultural y los posteriores ajustes para Turkia.

Commovente

Louis de Bernieres depicts the life of a small village, where both Christians and Muslims live side by side peacefully, until the war makes them suffer the hatred and cruelty, dividing families, lovers and friends. This is a heart-breaking novel, explaining the history and real events prior to, during and immediately after the 1. world war. This book reveals facts, which are not taught in any history class with such a deep feeling, logic and precisement, that the book and its thoughts just stick to one's mind and one cannot rid of them. One of the best book I have ever read, even though I must admit that sometimes the language is really tough to read and understand (when a mad person Ibrahim speaks, for instance). However, this makes the book even more interesting. MUST READ!

Great book