Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

'An emotional, funny, stunning novel which swings with wide smoothness between joy and bleakness, personal lives and history…it's lyrical and angry, satirical and earnest'Observer

'Among de Bernieres's skills are an archaeologists's eye for place, a historian's feel for time and a musician's ear for tone and tempo - the novel has everything, including a happy ending (of sorts). If Captain Corelli's Mandolin does not hold you in its thrall, it might be worth checking to see if your heart is made of stone.' Daily Telegraph

Beginning in 1940, as Italy prepares to attack Greece and enter the Second World War on the side of the Germans, Captain Corelli's Mandolin tells the story of Pelagia, the beautiful young daughter of Dr Iannis.

Engaged to Mandras, a handsome young fisherman, Pelagia is left alone when war intervenes and Mandras enlists. Following the invasion of the island by the Italians, Captain Antonio Corelli, a young and far from fanatical artillery captain with a passion for music, is billeted with Pelagia and her father.

As the Italian occupiers and Greek islanders begin to come to terms with each other, so Pelagia's love for Mandras falters and her affection for the charming and civilised Corelli grows. As an increasingly bestial war comes closer and closer, Corelli and Pelagia find themselves united by their love but divided by their nationality and by the savagery of war.

British author Louis de Bernières is well known for his forays into magical realism in such novels as The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman. Here he keeps it to a minimum, though certainly the secondary characters with whom he populates his island - the drunken priest, the strongman, the fisherman who swims with dolphins - would be at home in any of his wildly imaginative Latin American fictions. Instead, de Bernières seems interested in dissecting the nature of history as he tells his ever-darkening tale from many different perspectives. Captain Corelli's Mandolin works on many levels, as a love story, a war story and a deconstruction of just what determines the facts that make it into the history books.

About the Author

Louis de Bernières was born in London in 1954. He joined the army at 18 but left after spending four months at Sandhurst. After graduating from the Victoria University of Manchester, he took a postgraduate certificate in Education at Leicester Polytechnic and obtained his MA at the University of London.

Before writing full-time, he held many varied jobs including landscape gardener, motorcycle messenger and car mechanic. He also taught English in Colombia, an experience which determined the style and setting of his first three novels, The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (1990), Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (1991) and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992), each of which was heavily influenced by South American literature, particularly 'magic realism'.

In 1993, he was selected as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists 2' promotion in Granta magazine. His fourth novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, was published in the following year, winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Best Book). It was also shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year. Set on the Greek island of Cephalonia during the Second World War, the novel tells the story of a love affair between the daughter of a local doctor and an Italian soldier. It has become a worldwide bestseller and has now been translated into over 30 languages. A film adaptation of the novel was released in 2001, and the novel has also been adapted for the stage. In 2001, Red Dog was published - a collection of stories inspired by a statue of a dog encountered on a trip to a writers' festival in Australia in 1998.

He wrote the introduction to The Book of Job, one in a series of books reprinted from the Bible and published individually by Canongate Press in 1998 and his play, Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World, set in South-West London, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1999, and published in 2001. He is also a regular contributor of short stories to various newspapers and magazines. His novel Birds Without Wings (2004) was shortlisted for the 2004 Whitbread Novel Award and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize.

His latest novel is A Partisan's Daughter (2008), shortlisted for the 2008 Costal Novel Award. In 2009, he published a collection of short stories, Notwithstanding.

Or click here to go to Louis de Bernieres home page.

The Random House Reading Group page for this novel can be found here...

Here's the trailer to the not entirely successful or critically well-received 2001 film version. At least it will give you an idea of what the island of Cephallonia looks like.



Treasured island? Click to read how a change of holiday destination led to the writing of Captain Corelli's Mandolin