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Birds Without Wings

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Birds Without Wings

By: Louis De Bernieres
Narrated by: Christopher Kay
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About this listen

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'.

©2004 Louis de Bernières (P)2005 W. F. Howes Ltd Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Inspiring Tear-jerking Heartfelt

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After a very slow start, this became more and more interesting. The description of the fighting at Gallipoli is equal to the best wartime literature I have read. The historical insight into the making of Turkey from the collapsing Ottoman Empire is brilliant. Yet more powerful than all this is the terrific sense of humanity that emerges from the descriptions of the villagers, for all their simplicity, ignorance and superstition.

The narration is brilliant. Unfortunately the accents are so well done they seriously grate. It helped a great deal to increase the speed to 1.15, just about the only time I have done that in a few hundred books I have listened to.

Not so entertaining but fascinating history

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amazing narrator fantastic story, depicts exactly the turkish character and the area a great classic, quite the best loved it

Wonderful

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Unashamedly I adore Louis De Bernieres. He has an ability to paint pictures in words and create fullsome worlds that make the listener ache for times gone by. Much like Captain Corelli this a gentle, evocative account of broadly unremarkable people going about their daily lives, but wrought in such a way and woven into historical context that you absolutely fall head over heels for them. I can picture almost every character and somehow De Bernieres succeeds in combining complex, multiple characters and plots into an easy to absorb narrative. The detail is superb and despite plenty of traumatic and violent events, the story feels warm and heartening. It’s a huge soft couch of a narrative. I love this story!

Equally there are very significant real events in play, demonstrating the very worst of human ignorance, stupidity and our ability to scapegoat through prejudice. There are lessons from history, not dissimilar to the Third Reich or more recent Balkans War and these are vividly portrayed, not through violent detail but by the individual and collective journeys of key characters.

One criticism I would level is that much like ‘The Dust That Falls From Dreams’ the story is possibly a little drawn out in the final few chapters. But this is a small price to pay for the immersive story provided in both instances.

Just a beautiful and hugely evocative story

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Loved this book.. Well read interesting entertaining and in places so funny that I laughed out loud. The last time I remember laughing out loud at a book is when i was a child. Thoroughly recommend it.

Excellent listen

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Unrivaled storytelling on the end of the Ottoman world, and all the peoples crushed or irrevocably changed by it. A book so dear to my heart, brought to life by exquisite reading. Sadness and laughter mixed in with a great deal of context. Truly a must read for every human being.

A haunting & daunting warning against nationalism

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I’ve read this book before and wanted to revisit it. I decided to try the audio book which I thought might be a risk as sometimes you shouldn’t mess with a book you’ve loved.
I loved listening to it even more and will no doubt listen again. A beautiful story with expert narration.

Beautiful

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This book is simply beautiful. I have laughed and cried. I got educated in a history that was not made available when I was at school. I

simply beautiful story.

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I thought I would give up after the first few hours of listening as the story progression was very slow. However the scene setting is rewarded by the rest of the book which gives a detailed if depressing account of the end of the Ottoman period and early Turkish history. Narration is excellent but patience is required and rewarded throughout.

Enjoyable but slow

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This is a mixed bag. There are a whole set of interesting characters, perhaps too many for an audiobook, but nevertheless you do feel emotionally attached to them eventually. The book is set at a point in history where most English speakers will be unaware of historic events at that time. History is, after all, written by the victors, and the Allies were defeated by the Turkish Ottomans at Galipoli and then roundly humiliated by Attaturk in the Turkish war of independence. How accurate De Bernieres' description of events is, I can't judge, but you do feel for all the victims of the attrocities that we being perpetrated by all sides during the setting off the book.
However, the style of the book is often ponderous and De Bernieres tells it through often rambling chapters narrated by key characters. These narratives do end up being repetitive at times and meander greatly from the main plot line leaving you wondering if the Editor should have been a bit more ruthless when the book came to press.
The performance is faultless and very clear.
Overall, this is an interesting book but one for someone that has a fair bit of patience.

Interesting historical setting, too many anecdotes

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Lyrical, so many lines of the book I just had to write down because they were such powerful quotes, I enjoyed this book from beginning to end, it was perhaps a little slow for my liking at some points but everything comes together in the end and the writing which is so beautiful kept me engaged. The performance by Christopher Kay was brilliant.

Best book I've read this year so far

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