Scan barcode
A review by underthesea
Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernières
4.0
Birds without wings tells the story of XXth century southwestern Anatolia by pairing Christians with Muslims: Philotei and Ibrahim, Rustem and Ioanna, Karatavuk and Mehmetçik, Polixeni and Nermin/Ayse. Only Ataturk stands in the lonely historicity of Great Men, in the measure in that it is an intrinsic quality. Each relays the narration, quite without order: Ataturk every 2 to 6 chapters, Philotei every 2 to 10, local color every 3 to 4. Small amalgames of chapters have bits of classic storytelling: 12-15, Polixeni finds her mother, 31 to 34, Rustem buys Ioanna, 56 to 69, Karatavuk goes to war…
All of it is is set in a structure of wikipedia chapters; and that’s how Bernières manages to go through the Armenian genocide without a single morally ambiguous character. The burden of cruelty stands on an external observer. This structure precludes building up tension, but he gets moments of emotion in stand alone, violent moments: Yusuf gets his daughter killed, Rustem gets his wife stoned, Levon’s daughters are almost raped, Ali gives Polixeni his donkey, Ioanna owns her identity. I loved that bit! Of course she was from Ithaca.
There is an effort to give each character the voice that naturally fits his function: in both extremes, Theodorou the Greek merchant, ampulous and long winded, and Philotei, brief and barely gramatical, interested only in the things of women. There are some tirades of particularly well rendered pastiche, like the peripathetic anti Italian Crusade of Kristoforos. They have a rough symbolism: Philotei is times gone by, beautiful, simple and killed; Mustafa Kemal is the future, and Rustem could have the future if he didn’t long quite so much for the past. Ibrahim is joyful and therefore unhappy and mad; Fikret is intelectual honesty, Abdulhamid is kindness, Leyla the whore with-a-heart-of-gold, Polixeni the daughter, Ayse the wife, Nermin the mother. There isn’t a single complex character, except perhaps Leonidas, who ideologically is a fascist, in character a Judas, cursed with intelligence and nonetheless by action appears only to help. Karatavuk is discovered in the middle of the book as a poet, and then immediately degraded by war, and irritatingly naïf (“let me tell you a secret… almost no soldier truly believes that he will be killed”).
Anyway. It was certainly not the kind of book that can catch me unaware, but it was a solid, comforting read.
All of it is is set in a structure of wikipedia chapters; and that’s how Bernières manages to go through the Armenian genocide without a single morally ambiguous character. The burden of cruelty stands on an external observer. This structure precludes building up tension, but he gets moments of emotion in stand alone, violent moments: Yusuf gets his daughter killed, Rustem gets his wife stoned, Levon’s daughters are almost raped, Ali gives Polixeni his donkey, Ioanna owns her identity. I loved that bit! Of course she was from Ithaca.
There is an effort to give each character the voice that naturally fits his function: in both extremes, Theodorou the Greek merchant, ampulous and long winded, and Philotei, brief and barely gramatical, interested only in the things of women. There are some tirades of particularly well rendered pastiche, like the peripathetic anti Italian Crusade of Kristoforos. They have a rough symbolism: Philotei is times gone by, beautiful, simple and killed; Mustafa Kemal is the future, and Rustem could have the future if he didn’t long quite so much for the past. Ibrahim is joyful and therefore unhappy and mad; Fikret is intelectual honesty, Abdulhamid is kindness, Leyla the whore with-a-heart-of-gold, Polixeni the daughter, Ayse the wife, Nermin the mother. There isn’t a single complex character, except perhaps Leonidas, who ideologically is a fascist, in character a Judas, cursed with intelligence and nonetheless by action appears only to help. Karatavuk is discovered in the middle of the book as a poet, and then immediately degraded by war, and irritatingly naïf (“let me tell you a secret… almost no soldier truly believes that he will be killed”).
Anyway. It was certainly not the kind of book that can catch me unaware, but it was a solid, comforting read.