Birds Without Wings
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · Paperback · June 28, 2005
In his first novel since Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernières creates a world, populates it with characters as real as our best friends, and launches it into the maelstrom of twentieth-century history.
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- Who it’s for
- A village’s intimate lives meet the upheavals of a changing Turkey.
- Themes
- Ottoman-era history, Religious coexistence, Modernization and change
- Genres
- 20th-Century Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Family Sagas
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Start with this bookAbout this book
In his first novel since Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernières creates a world, populates it with characters as real as our best friends, and launches it into the maelstrom of twentieth-century history. The setting is a small village in southwestern Anatolia in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. Everyone there speaks Turkish, though they write it in Greek letters.
Continue reading
It’s a place that has room for a professional blasphemer; where a brokenhearted aga finds solace in the arms of a Circassian courtesan who isn’t Circassian at all; where a beautiful Christian girl named Philothei is engaged to a Muslim boy named Ibrahim. But all of this will change when Turkey enters the modern world. Epic in sweep, intoxicating in its sensual detail, Birds Without Wings is an enchantment.
Village and Upheaval
A village’s intimate lives meet the upheavals of a changing Turkey.
Come here for
- A close-knit village rendered in vivid cultural detail
- Tender, complicated bonds across religious lines
Expect
- A broad sweep through twentieth-century history
- Sensual detail alongside intimate human stories
Where it sits
| 20th-Century Historical Fiction | 89% |
|---|---|
| Family Sagas | 28% |
| Literary Fiction | 19% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Historical Fiction
- Historical Romance
- Multicultural & Interracial Romance
- Authors
- Louis de Bernieres
- Publisher
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Published
- June 28, 2005
- Format
- Paperback
- Theme
- Ottoman-era history · Religious coexistence · Modernization and change
- Reading lane
- Historical Fiction