Corelli's Mandolin: A Novel - Softcover

De Berni�res, Louis

4.02

86,699 ratings by Goodreads

9780679436447: Corelli's Mandolin: A Novel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679436448 ISBN 13: 9780679436447

Publisher: Pantheon, 1994

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The idyllic world of the Greek island of Cephallonia is forever changed by the inexorable changes of World War II, as the inhabitants struggle to cope with the Axis invasion and occupation. 25,000 first printing.

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Review:

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 Berni�res is well known for his forays into magical realism in such novels as The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, Se�or 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 Berni�res seems interested in dissecting the nature of history as he tells his ever-darkening tale from many different perspectives. 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. --Alix Wilber

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The time -- fifty years ago. The setting -- the Greek Island of Cephallonia -- an idyllic world that is only slowly entering the twentieth century when the inexorable and transforming tide of World War II rolls onto its shores.

Louis de Bernieres's stunning novel chronicles the lives of the people of Cephallonia as they contend with the Axis invasion and occupation, and the unexpected acts of God and man that shape their lives during the five decades that follow. It chronicles the days and nights of the island's inhabitants -- the widowed doctor, his brainy daughter and her innocent (or deadly) fisherman fiance, the wine-besotted priest, the gentle strongman giant, the ancient political debaters down at the tavern, and the uninvited newcomers: in particular, the reluctant head of the Italian garrison -- the charming, mandolin-playing

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