Louis De Bernieres

The well-loved, bestselling story of love, history and heroism. THE MULTIMILLION COPY BESTSELLER. 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 consumate musician. When the local doctor's daughter's letters to her fiancé -- and members 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?

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Louis de Bernières

THE MULTIMILLION COPY BESTSELLER.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 consumate musician. When the local doctor's daughter's letters to her fiance - and members 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?

BEAN BY BEAN THE SACK FILLS - ‘mysterious postcards in rather truncated Greek’ from around the world 

Beatrix

From Santa Fe came one(a postcard) that said, ‘You would like it here. All the houses are made of mud.' From Edinburgh: ‘The wind at the top of the castle knocks you off your feet.' From Vienna: ‘There is a statue of a Russian soldier here, and everyone calls it “The Monument to the Unknown Rapist".' From Rio de Janeiro: ‘Carnival time. Streets full of urine and heartbreakingly beautiful girls.’ From London: ‘Mad people; terrible fog.’ From Paris: ‘Found a shop that only sold trusses and hernia supports.' From Glasgow: 'Knee-deep in soot and fallen drunks.' From Moscow: ‘Works of art in the metro.' From Madrid: ‘Too hot. Everyone asleep.' From Cape Town: ‘Nice fruit, rotten pasta.’ From Calcutta: 'Buried in dust. Abysmal diarrhoea.’

‘The half-forgotten island of Cephallonia rises improvidently and inadvisedly from the lonian Sea; it is an island so immense in antiquity that the very rocks themselves exhale nostalgia and the red earth is stupefied not only by the sun, but by the impossible weight of memory…’

..and in the darkness I would hear him saying, 'Koritsimou, if it wasn't for you, if it wasn't for you...’ and he would shake his head because for once he had no words, his heart was too big to hold them..

 She wandered from room to room, her footsteps echoing in that empty, haunted house, her heart aching for herself and for mankind.

Therefore there were some mothers who made lamentation over the dead children of other mothers, but most were left with sons who now were melding with the soil of Cephallonia or who had scattered to the lonian air as ash, cut off in the full exuberance of youth and lost forever to a world that had ignored their plight in life and disregarded them in death.

He seemed suddenly to have become a dream-creature of frightening and infinite fragility, something too exquisite and ephemeral to be human.

Officially engaged to a man who was going to wrestle with fate, to a man who should have drowned in the sea, a man who jumbled a marriage together with whitebait and war, a man who was a boy who played with dolphins and was too beautiful to go away to die in the snows of Tsamoria. 

The inscrutable goats of Mt Aenos turned wind-ward, imbibing the damp exhalation of the sea at dawn that served the place of water in that arid, truculent, and indomitable land.

a novel by Louis De Berniéres.

Corelli's mandolin

Sarah Campbell

Love itself if what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.

'And another thing. Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is.

History ought to consist only of the anecdotes of the little people who are caught up in it.

I am not a cynic, but I do know that history is the propaganda of the victors. 

taryn a.

For a few years, I've the habit of asking others about books they feel are necessary to the human experience. I haven't had a personal answer to that question until now. A beautiful, poignant, and devastating read that I plan to revisit again.

Bee 

A wonderful book which combines romance and love with the brutalities and hardship of war.

Melody Izard

Love and war. Romance and despair. Humor and tragedy. Good and evil side by side.

Ralston Hough

Sonia Grgas

Francine Corry

Kahli Scott

Louis De Bernières

Contemporary / British English This is a great love story set in the tragedy of war. It is 1941. The Italian officer, Captain Corelli, falls in love with Pelagia, a young Greek girl. But Pelegia's fiance is fighting the Italian army Captain Corelli's Mandolin is now a film, starring Nicolas Cage.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

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