A review by kirstiecat
Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières

4.0

Although I think this book deserves 4 stars objectively because of all of the research done for it, I would on a personal level give it 3 stars...mainly because I didn't enjoy any of the overly long and tedious descriptions of war from the 1915 era of the Ottoman Empire. It is somewhat interesting that I've now read this book and The Bastard of Istanbul and they give completely different perspectives (I seem to recall Jeffrey Eugenides talking about Turks persecuting Greeks at around this time as well when the book opens.) Basically, here we hear about the Greek Christians persecuting the Turkish Muslims though for the most part it gets incredibly confusing about whose side anyone is on. What is pretty clear is how war is not benefitting anyone involved, least of all the women in various small towns that are being tortured to death in all manner of horrifying fashion.


I don't like reading about war and overall I thought the character development was rich and it told a powerful story but I would have liked more of that and less scenes of war. It's always pretty despicable to me to think of what tragedies against eachother humans are capable of committing....