Name: Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Rating: 3.9836065573770494 (61 reviews)
ISBN: 9780679763970

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is set 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 Bernières is well known for his forays into magical realism in such novels as The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, Señor 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 Bernières seems interested in dissecting the nature of history as he tells his ever-darkening tale from many different perspectives. Captain 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.

Louis de Bernieres was born in London in 1954. After graduating in Philosophy from the Victoria University of Manchester, he took a postgraduate certificate in Education at Leicester Polytechnic and passed his MA, with distinction, at the University of London. He has held various jobs: landscape gardener, mechanic, officer cadet at Sandhurst and schoolteacher in both Colombia and England.

De Bernières’ first novel, The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, was published in 1990 and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best First Book Eurasia Region in 1991. The next year, his second book, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best Book Eurasia Region. His third book, The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman, was published in 1992. These works were influenced by de Bernières’ experiences in Colombia and together make up his ‘Latin American trilogy’. Louis de Bernières was selected by Granta magazine as one of the twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993. Since then he has become well known internationally as a writer, with Captain Corelli's Mandolin winning the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Novel in 1994. His acclaimed sixth novel, Birds Without Wings, came out in 2004. A Partisan's Daughter (2008), was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and Notwithstanding: English Village Stories, was published in Autumn 2009. De Bernieres’ first collection of poetry, Imagining Alexandria: Poems in Memory of Constantinos Cavafis (2013) is also available in audio, read by the author (CD and download). Publication of his major new novel, The Dust That Falls From Dreams, was in July 2015, and his new collection of poems, OF LOVE AND DESIRE, is out in February 2016.

As well as writing, de Bernieres plays the flute, mandolin and guitar. He lives in Norfolk. (source)