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Birds Without Wings, Louis de Bernieres
Secker and Warburg
Reviewed by Nick Churchouse (Courtesy of Taranaki Daily News)

Birds Without Wings is a fantastic name for this book, and its aptness struck me only a few minutes before writing this, one week after finishing reading it.

There is a lot of walking, some birdlike characters and, yes, a lot of floundering in the vain pursuit of flight from a war-torn land and an archaic culture in the mire of revolution after revolution.

In a novel recounting the forging of Turkish history, de Bernieres brings his resplendent ability to build and grow the most magnificent characters from any culture and wields it mightily as indeed the reader has to do also with the impressive 624-page volume. The story stretches over a lifetime, and a period of tumult at the far end of the Mediterranean.

World wars, political upheaval, the death of dynasties and a right tangle of religion versus reality are as prevalent in Birds Without Wings as are the more novel-ish themes of love, revenge, betrayal and inspiration.

De Bernieres' straddling of these two micro and macro views from chapter to chapter could throw the reader off track, and it took some time to struggle through the early stages. The fragmented commentary bounces so far and wide that the book is an easy one to pick up and put down as you please. But the stories that make up the Turkish tale are just as engaging as the early 19th-century wrestle for global domination, and they inject a personality into the events that surrounded the bloody trenches of Gallipoli, a very poignant and oft-thumbed chapter in New Zealand's defining years as well.

If Birds Without Wings is too big, then its excuse can be that it marries a colourful insight into the evolution of modern Turkey with a crop of characters that comprise a delightful sprinkling of wild flowers among the historical poppy fields of western Anatolia. And with de Bernieres sowing the seeds, it's a posy you'll enjoy plucking.