Showing results by author "Louis de Bernières" in All Categories

Birds Without Wings tells of the inhabitants of a small coastal town in South West Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman empire: the local Potter and fount of proverbial wisdom; a Christian girl of legendary beauty; childhood friends who play in the hills above the town, and the two holy men of different faiths, who greet each other with the words 'infidel efendi'.

Of Love and Desire is a rich collection of love poems written over a lifetime, capturing its many forms: from rapture, infatuation and urgency to sorrow, heartache and disillusion. Poetry was de Bernières' first and greatest literary love, a passion evident in the musicality and emotion of his poems, which are full of stories and the truth of lived experience.

It is 1941 and Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to the Greek island of Cephallonia as part of the occupying forces. At first he is ostracised by the locals, but as a conscientious soldier, whose main aim is to have a peaceful war, he proves in time to be civilised, humorous - and a consummate musician. When the local doctor's daughter's letters to her fiancé go unanswered, the working of the eternal triangle seems inevitable.

Set against the backdrop of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, the Gallipoli campaign and the subsequent bitter struggle between Greeks and Turks, Birds Without Wings traces the fortunes of one small community in south-west Anatolia - a town in which Christian and Muslim lives and traditions have co-existed peacefully for centuries.

Poetry was Louis de Bernières’ first literary love. Here the much-loved author returns us to the vivid Mediterranean landscape of his fiction. Introduced to Greek poetry while in Corfu in 1983, de Bernières’ own poems about the distant past, the erotic and the philosophical owe much to the influence of the great Alexandrian poet.

Dr Iannis practices medicine on the island of Cephalonia, accompanied by his daughter, Pelagia, to whom he imparts much of his healing art. Even when the Italians do invade, life isn't so bad - at first anyway. The officer in command of the Italian garrison is the cultured Captain Antonio Corelli, whose most precious possession is his mandolin.

A beautifully wrought and unlikely love story, exploring the power of storytelling. The new audiobook from the acclaimed author of Birds Without Wings and Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a love story at once raw and sweetly funny, wry and heartbreakingly sad. Chris is bored, lonely, trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage. In his forties, he's a stranger to the 1970s youth culture of London, a stranger to himself on the night he invites a hooker into his car.

Rosie and Daniel have moved to Ceylon with their little daughter to start a new life at the dawn of the 1920s, attempting to put the trauma of the First World War behind them and to rekindle a marriage that gets colder every day. However, even in the lush plantation hills it is hard for them to escape the ties of home and the yearning for fulfilment that threatens their marriage.

From the author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin; a heart-warming collection of stories inspired by life in an English village. Casting his mind back to the village where he grew up, Louis de Bernières brings us a forgotten England: where a lady might dress in plus fours, a retired general might give up wearing clothes and a spiritualist might live with her sister and the ghost of her husband. Here we find the atmosphere of those times as it was in the countryside, and the people whose lives are worth celebrating.

In the brief golden years of King Edward VII’s reign, Rosie McCosh and her three very different sisters are growing up in an eccentric household in Kent, with their neighbours the Pitt boys on one side and the Pendennis boys on the other. But their days of childhood adventure are shadowed by the approach of war that will engulf them on the cusp of adulthood. When the boys end up scattered along the Western Front, Rosie faces the challenges of life for those left behind.

Full of wit, warmth and charm, Louis de Bernières’ Labels and Other Stories features tales from throughout his career as a masterful storyteller and transports us around the globe, from the London Underground to Turkish ruins to the banks of the Amazon. De Bernières’ unlikely and unforgettable heroes are found collecting luxury tinned cat-food labels, posting fish to the President, falling in love with dolphin deities and dining with Brazilian street thieves. 

Daniel's marriage has fractured beyond repair, and Daniel's relationship with his son, Bertie, has been a failure since Bertie was a small boy. But after his brother Archie's death, Daniel is keen for new perspectives. He first travels to Peshawar to bury Archie in the place he loved best and then finds himself in Canada, avoiding his family and friends back in England. But some bonds are hard to break. Daniel and Bertie's different experiences of war, although devastating, also bring with them the opportunity for the two to reconnect.

When a family tragedy means Mick is sent to the outback to live with his grandpa, it looks as if he has a lonely life ahead of him. The cattle station is a tough place for a child, where nature is brutal and the men must work hard in the heat and dust. However, after a cyclone hits, things change for Mick. Exploring the floodwater, he finds a lost puppy covered in mud and half drowned. Mick and his dog immediately become inseparable as they take on the adventures offered by their unusual home and the business of growing up together.

Mr Ginger Leghorn is used to collecting up umbrellas and other lost property, but he’s never found an abandoned puppy on his train before. He has no intention of keeping it, but his five children - Alfie, Arthur, Beryl, Sissy and Albert - have other ideas, and Jim is soon a much-loved but often disruptive member of the family. Whether it’s his feud with the cat, getting stuck in rabbit holes, accidentally going to sea, accompanying the children to school or carol singing at Christmas, Jim has a knack of making himself the centre of attention.

Q wants a simpler and safer life. His work as a quantum cryptographer for the government has led him to believe a crisis is imminent for civilisation and he's looking for somewhere to ride out what's ahead. He buys a ruined farmhouse in Cornwall and begins to build his own self-sufficient haven. Over the course of this quest he meets the eccentric characters who already live on the moors nearby.