Captain Corelli's Mandolin: Louis De Bernieres

Product Information

He reached a finger to twirl his moustache, experienced a peculiar irritation when he remembered that he had shaved it off as a gesture of defiance against Hitler, and then looked down at the black armband that he had worn ever since the death of Metaxas. He later visits Francisco's mother and tells her that Francisco died peacefully and for a good cause. De Bernières's novel includes passages where a narrator tells us things -such as future events - that none of his characters can know. Meanwhile, Pelagia plays Penelope, waiting patiently for her Odysseus, weaving that wedding blanket. What spoiled it always was that none of us knew why we were in Albania, none of us had an easy conscience about this rebuilding of the Roman Empire.

Dimitrios Podimatas, a 78-year-old Cepha-lonian communist resistance veteran, remembers five of those who died in the Italian- German clashes of September 1943.The German commander announced through an interpreter that he would be freed if he gave information about the resistance. The characters are absolutely wonderful, from the village strongman to the crazy priest to the good doctor to even the pine marten. It is “certain”, the British soldier-turned-author declares in the novel, that the “communist andartes of ELAS took no part, seeing no reason to shake themselves out of their parasitic lethargy”. But woven into this human drama is a one-sided account of the history of the period, and a crude and unremittingly hostile portrayal of the Greek communists in particular, who led the resistance against the Italian and German occupations and later fought British and American-backed forces in the civil war of the late 40s. Dr Iannis, his daughter Pelagia, and Captain Corelli, the Italian soldier billeted in their house during the wartime occupation, may be the central characters, but we hear many different narrative voices, some first-person and some third-person.

de Bernieres’ writing style is excellent and the actual book felt almost poetic because of the way in which it was written.I saw this movie first years ago and decided to read the book for clarity on Carlos' role in the story which is quite vague in the movie. On the feast day of St Gerasimos, patron saint of the Greek island of Cephalonia, the mummified remains of the holy man are paraded and the islanders become "outlandishly drunk". Makis Faraklos, now the 76-year-old president of the resistance veterans’ association in the Cephalonian town of Lixouri, remembers witnessing the fate of some of those whom de Bernières insists spent the German occupation doing nothing.