Birds Without Wings by Louis De Bernieres

 

In this novel, Louis De Bernieres takes the reader to a small village in Anatolia where the people speak Turkish but write it in Greek because the only school teacher is a Greek nationalist fanatic and refuses to teach anything else.  The village is on the verge of change after staying the same for as long as anyone can remember.  It is the last days of the Ottoman Empire and the country and the inhabitants are about to get caught up in world affairs and world wars as the powers of the world decide what will happen to this area.

But outside of that, the novel is all about the people in the village.  There is the most beautiful girl and her friend the ugliest.  The beautiful girl is loved and loves a goatherd and the ugly one is loved by a fisherman.  There are the two friends who take on the identities of the bird whistles made for them by the potter and who are separated when war comes because one is Muslim and one is Christian.  There is the Muslim cleric who loves nothing more than his horse.  The richest man in town is betrayed by his wife and he takes her to be stoned and she is abandoned to a brothel in town.  He takes a mistress who lives with him for many years and who becomes friends with the two girls who love local boys.  

Readers will learn much about the culture of this area but De Bernieres is also writing on a more global level.  We see how artificial the divisions of religion and occupation and wealth are and how much alike all people are.  All want friendship and love, someone to tell their hurts and successes to.  The world intrudes into the smaller friendships we make and countries squabble and go to world to conquer each other but life is led on the individual level.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.