Sunday Age (Melbourne)
June 27, 2004 Sunday
First Edition
The bare bones of Turkey
by Claire Scobie
Louis de Bernieres sticks to the Aegean in his new novel. By Claire
Scobie.
Louis de Bernieres famously once likened “the pressure of trying to
write a second bestseller to standing in Trafalgar Square and being
told to get an erection in the rush hour”.
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin not only cast de Bernieres as a publishing
phenomenon, but at the height of Corellimania, tourism to the Greek
island of Cephallonia where the novel is set, rose by 20 per cent.
Since then more than 3 million copies of Captain Corelli have been
sold in English and it has been translated into 24 languages. So has
he succeeded with his latest novel, Birds without Wings?
“What, get an erection?” He chuckles. “Yes, to begin with I had a
ghastly sense of fatalism that everybody was going to say it wasn’t
as good as Corelli. . . Now I think it’s probably better, although it
may not be as cuddly or lovable.”
Louis de Bernieres, who was in Australia last month, is at 49 a
retiring, jovial man given to frequent bursts of belly-shaking
laughter and piquant English wit. Birds without Wings, 10 years in
the writing, is a sumptuous epic feast of love and war, about the
inhabitants of Eskibahce (literally the Garden of Eden), a town in
south-west Turkey at the turn of the 20th century.
Christians, Muslims, Armenians and Greeks co-exist, bound by history,
inter-marriage and friendship, until World War One heralds the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire and shatters their relative communal
harmony. It bears de Bernieres’ literary hallmarks – vast emotional
breadth, dazzling characterisation, rich historical detail (and
gruesome battle scenes), swerving between languid sensuality and
horror, humour and choking despair.
Its genesis was in de Bernieres’ fascination with the Turkish
accounts of Gallipoli – where, “as in Australia, Gallipoli has a role
of myth-making . . . Turks often think of Gallipoli as the point when
the Ottoman Empire was transformed into Turkey . . . because Mustafa
Kemal (later known as Ataturk) was the most important Turkish
commander at Gallipoli and then became the head of the republic”.
For his research de Bernieres trawled through the Ottoman archives,
reading primary sources in French (the diplomatic language), visited
Turkey three times and spent two weeks walking the Gallipoli battle
fields, where his maternal grandfather had fought and was shot three
times in one day. Some 40 years later, still suffering from war
wounds, “he shot himself, a late casualty of the war,” says his
grandson.
“Gallipoli was moving and made me feel very sad. Bones are coming to
the surface everywhere . . . and you have no idea whether they are
French bones or Anzac bones, or British or Sikhs. That makes you
understand the fatuousness of nationalism because you can’t tell the
nationality of a bone. You can’t tell if it is a Muslim or Christian,
just a human bone.”
While Birds was not written as a modern fable, “it necessarily is a
parable”, he says, reflecting his hatred of “certainties,
absolutism”, nationalism and religious dogma.
De Bernieres says he was an “obstinate and wilful child”, traits he
still holds dear today. He read voraciously and recalls once “trying
to dig to Australia in the orchard” but only getting “about four-feet
down”. Aged 18 he briefly served in the British army but quit
because, he “didn’t want to be told what to do”, and was much happier
strumming Bob Dylan ballads on his guitar and writing poetry.
He then travelled to Colombia, working as a teacher and part-time
cowboy. The experience had a lasting impression and aged 35, while
still teaching in London, he wrote his debut, The War of Don
Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, inspired by South American magical realism.
Two more Latin American novels followed until “by happy accident” he
stumbled across the history of Cephallonia, inspiring Captain
Corelli, for which he was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in
1995.
When the film of Captain Corelli was released in 2001, much was made
of de Bernieres’ disdain. In fact he has seen it five times, thinks
the cinematography is “marvellous”, but only wishes it could have
been “a European art-house film rather than a Hollywood blockbuster”.
He is prepared for the criticism that Birds may invite. “I am trying
to offend everybody with perfect fairness, so it should be offensive
to Turks, Greeks and Armenians.” In it he has included animals,
children and old people, who he believes are under-represented in
literary fiction.
His last endearing semi-fictionalised work, Red Dog, chronicled the
exploits of a “splendid dog” Red, from Karratha in Western Australia
who he immortalised as the canine hero who hitches rides and drops
vile “stinkers”.
De Bernieres describes writing as “a pleasure . . . a compulsion that
comes upon me, a useful form of obsessive madness I suppose. I get
obsessed about music, about golf, but they come and go, and writing
is like that”.
He has many books on the go – one about eccentric characters from the
village in which he grew up, another about the life of his paternal
grandfather. The fortune earned from Captain Corelli has given him
the freedom to choose what to write and when – he had no contract for
the latest until it was finished. A few years ago, he moved to a
Georgian rectory in Norfolk but still drives his veteran Morris Minor
Traveller.
“It’s very strange to have enough money for the first time in your
life,” he says. “Instead of buying one good pair of quite expensive
trousers you go and buy 10 cheap ones.”
In the past few years he has alternated between furious bursts of
writing, inventing words (“Shakespeare did so I don’t see why the
rest of us can’t”), gardening, pottering and serenading his cat with
his mandolin or the robins with his flute.
De Bernieres always shows the final manuscript to his partner,
actress and director Cathy Gill, 32, who is not impressed by how
famous he may be.
Finally, he says he wants to be remembered for taking the British
novel out of north London and onto a world stage.
Birds without Wings will be published this week by Secker & Warburg
at $49.95
From: Baghdasarian