Louis de Bernieres's last novel, Corelli's Mandolin, was met with the highest praise. Now, de Berniers gives us his long-awaited new novel. Huge, resonant, lyrical, filled with humor and pathos, it is a novel about the political and personal costs of war, and of love - between men and women, between friends, between those who are driven to be enemies.

It is the story of a small coastal town in South West Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire told in the richly varied voices of the people whose lives are rooted there, intertwined for untold years. There is Iskander, the potter and local font of proverbial wisdom; Karatavuk - Iskander's son - whose playground stretches across the hills. And there is Philothei, the Christian girl of legendary beauty, courted from infancy by Ibrahim the goatherd - a great love that culminates in tragedy and madness. But this is also the story of Musafa Kemal, whose military genius will lead him to victory against the invading forces of the Great War and reshaping of the whole region.

When the young men of the town are conscripted, we follow Karatavuk to Gallipoli, where the intimate brutality of battle robs him of all innocence. And in the town he left behind, we see how the twin scourges of fanatical religion and nationalism quickly, and irreversibly, destroy the fabric of centuries-old peace.

Epic in its narrative sweep - steeped in historical fact - yet profoundly humane and dazzlingly evocative in its emotional and sensual detail, Birds Without Wings is a triumph.

(jacket flap)