Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Softcover

De Bernieres, Louis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009954086X ISBN 13: 9780099540861

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2010

Synopsis

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 but far from fanatical 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 - a member of the underground - go unanswered, the working of the eternal triangle seems inevitable. But can this fragile love survive as a war of bestial savagery gets closer and the lines are drawn between invader and defender?

About this title

Review:

Captain Corelli's Mandolin is set in the early days of the second world war, before Benito Mussolini invaded Greece. 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, who responds to a Nazi greeting of "Heil Hitler" with his own "Heil Puccini", and whose most precious possession is his mandolin. It isn't long before Corelli and Pelagia are involved in a heated affair--despite her engagement to a young fisherman, Mandras, who has gone off to join Greek partisans. Love is complicated enough in wartime, even when the lovers are on the same side. And for Corelli and Pelagia, it becomes increasingly difficult to negotiate the minefield of allegiances, both personal and political, as all around them atrocities mount, former friends become enemies and the ugliness of war infects everyone it touches.

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, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord 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.

Review:

"A wonderful epic novel" (The Times)

"Louis de Bernières is the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh... His novel will give pleasure to all sorts of readers" (A.S. Byatt Evening Standard)

"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)

"A master of haunted realism. His best novel yet. He deals with death and love and tragedy... This is a novel to be prized" (Daily Mail)

"Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a wonderful, hypnotic novel of fabulous scope and tremendous, iridescent charm - and you can quote me" (Joseph Heller)

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 009954086X
• ISBN 13: 9780099540861
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 560