Louis de Bernieres

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. Ostracised at first, he proves in time to be peace-loving, humorous - and a consummate musician. A burgeoning love with the local doctor's daughter, whose letters to her fiancé - and members of the underground - go unanswered, seems inevitable. But can it survive as a war of bestial savagery gets closer and the lines are drawn between invader and defender?

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Sarah Campbell

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

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

'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.

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.

Beatrix

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.

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

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

..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..

‘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…’

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

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.’

Captain Corelli's Mandolin quotes

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