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Louis de BernièresLouis de Bernières
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Critical perspective
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Biography
Novelist Louis de Bernières was born in London in 1954. He joined the army at 18 but left after spending four months at Sandhurst. After graduating from the Victoria University of Manchester, he took a postgraduate certificate in Education at Leicester Polytechnic and obtained his MA at the University of London.
Before writing full-time, he held many varied jobs including landscape gardener, motorcycle messenger and car mechanic. He also taught English in Colombia, an experience which determined the style and setting of his first three novels, The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (1990), Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (1991) and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992), each of which was heavily influenced by South American literature, particularly 'magic realism'.
In 1993, he was selected as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists 2' promotion in Granta magazine. His fourth novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, was published in the following year, winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Best Book). It was also shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year. Set on the Greek island of Cephalonia during the Second World War, the novel tells the story of a love affair between the daughter of a local doctor and an Italian soldier. It has become a worldwide bestseller and has now been translated into over 30 languages. A film adaptation of the novel was released in 2001, and the novel has also been adapted for the stage. In 2001, Red Dog was published - a collection of stories inspired by a statue of a dog encountered on a trip to a writers' festival in Australia in 1998.
He wrote the introduction to The Book of Job, one in a series of books reprinted from the Bible and published individually by Canongate Press in 1998 and his play, Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World, set in South-West London, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1999, and published in 2001. He is also a regular contributor of short stories to various newspapers and magazines. His novel Birds Without Wings (2004) was shortlisted for the 2004 Whitbread Novel Award and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book).
His latest novel is A Partisan's Daughter (2008), shortlisted for the 2008 Costal Novel Award. In 2009, he published a collection of short stories, Notwithstanding.
Genres (in alphabetical order)
Drama, Fiction
Bibliography
The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts Secker & Warburg, 1990
Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord Secker & Warburg, 1991
The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman Secker & Warburg, 1992
Captain Corelli's Mandolin Secker & Warburg, 1994
Labels One Horse Press, 1997
The Book of Job (introduction) Canongate Press, 1998
Red Dog Secker & Warburg, 2001
Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World Vintage, 2001
Birds Without Wings Secker & Warburg, 2004
A Partisan's Daughter Secker & Warburg, 2008
Notwithstanding Secker & Warburg, 2009
Prizes and awards
1991 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best First Book) The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts
1992 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book) Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord
1994 Sunday Express Book of the Year (shortlist) Captain Corelli's Mandolin
1995 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book) Captain Corelli's Mandolin
1995 Lannan Literary Award (Fiction)
1997 British Book Awards Author of the Year
2004 Whitbread Novel Award (shortlist) Birds Without Wings
2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book) (shortlist) Birds Without Wings
2008 Costa Novel Award (shortlist) A Partisan's Daughter
Critical Perspective
Louis de Bernières became well known with his internationally best-selling novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin (1994), a bitter sweet love story (but so much more) set during the wartime occupation of the Greek island Cephallonia, which was recently made into a movie. His books are vastly entertaining, by turns funny, moving and nightmarish, capturing the persistence of humane values and eccentricity even amidst the horrors of war. De Bernières seamlessly mixes broad comedy with graphic descriptions of suffering or violence, tender episodes and visionary flights of fancy. His books are also highly sexed, bawdy and satirical (especially on representatives of 'Englishness' as perceived the locals). Captain Corelli's special kind of historical romance was, however, something of a departure from his earlier novels' full use of 'magic realism'. De Bernières's latest fiction, Red Dog (2001), is different again: far more small scale and casual, appropriate to the setting in and around a mining town in Western Australia. It apparently draws upon already-existing stories about a sheep dog who becomes a local celebrity, lived a free-spirit life and 'belonged to everyone'.
The formative period for de Bernières' writing was no doubt the two years he spent teaching in Columbia during the mid-nineteen seventies. He has gone on to develop acute, if usually comic, angles upon contemporary South America - especially its problems with the drugs trade and political corruption - as well as the exploitation of its land and peoples by landowners, gangsters or multi-national companies. As a writer, he undoubtedly absorbed that influential South American strain of 'Magic Realism' associated with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Isabelle Allende's The House of the Spirits. Like them, de Bernières' South American trilogy of novels describes with great dexterity a world in which the extraordinary can co-exist with the everyday, machismo with powerful with powerful matriarchal figures. A renegade Catholic priest levitates while preaching 'the gospel according to Catullus'; in this religiously heterodox realm the power of the spirit world is undoubted, clairvoyants and dreams accepted, alongside visions of Catholic saints, demons, and native deities. Dionisio Vivo in Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (1991) is seen not only as a national hero ('The Deliverer') against the cocaine gangs but as a brujo (magician): and as a Christ-like figure, attracting followers (the army of women who want to have his children) and being asked to heal the sick. In the trilogy as a whole, characters re-appear from book to book to take their places in a fast-moving cast of campesinos, landowners, politicians, gangsters, whores, priests - as well as thawed-out conquistadors and other spirits of the dead.
The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (1990) is the first novel, set in an imaginary South American republic nominally ruled by President Veracruz, while real power is fought over by the government bureaucracy, self-serving generals and 'coca lords', and the army battles Marxist guerrillas. The first novel centres upon landowner Dona Constanza's intended diversion of a river for her swimming pool, which threatens the locals' water supplies, only to have her plans sabotaged by guerrillas and buffoonish Englishman Don Emanuel. She re-appears in the third book, having changed sides and fallen in love, caught out having alfresco sex - by the visiting British Ambassador. As Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord opens, hapless President Veracruz is considering an offer from 'El Jerarca' (a memorable portrait of amorality partly based on the notorious Colombian drug-lord Pablo Escobar) to pay off the National Debt in return for immunity from prosecution. Mutilated corpses are regularly appearing as a warning outside the house of Dionisio and Vivo, a philosophy lecturer who becomes the conscience of a nation 'disgusted by the anarchy of the coca trade', with his courageously outspoken open letters to the government and the newspapers. When bribery and threats fail, a series of assassins are sent to get rid of Señor Vivo - only to find that he is protected by seemingly magical powers of escape. Vivo's love affair with Anica, daughter of a powerful arms dealer, proves his undoing, as he is unable to save her, and his best friend, from El Jerarca's henchmen. After a period of mourning and near-madness, Vivo, assisted by his devoted band of women warriors, embarks on an exemplary revenge.
The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992) is perhaps the best novel of the three, with some very funny scenes - as when Cardinal Guzman becomes convinced of the erotic dimensions of Beethoven's 'Eroica' symphony, and seeks to have it banned. But the slapstick comedy alternates with a truly dark vision of fanatical Catholic 'crusaders', lead by sadistic Jesuit Mgr Anquilar, whose task, given to them by the corrupt Guzman, is to rid the land of heresy. Tormented by guilt and sexual demons, the Cardinal kills his beloved illegitimate child, and then resigns to seek happiness with his mulatta housekeeper. There are sub-plots in profusion, and the climatic conflict between Vivo's peasants and Anquilar's crusaders (nicknamed 'The English') takes place in 'the marvellous reality' of Condebajo de Los Gatos, with interventions by the supernatural, including Vivo's ancestor, his pet jaguars and a belated appearance by the army.
De Bernières was selected as one of the influential Granta magazine's 'Best of Young British Novelists' in 1993, and then published Captain Correli's Mandolin, easily his best and most ambitiously multi-layered book. By his own account, he 'tried to be as true to history as possible', in depicting the political and military background to the occupation of Cephallonia by Italian and German troops. As it opens, local physician Doctor Iannias is writing his own history of the island, and the narrative goes on to be told by a multitude of narrators. These include Mussolini himself, a self-sacrificing Italian soldier (L'Omosessuale') forced to keep his sexuality a secret, and Mandras the local fisherman whose experiences turn him from comical would-be lover into a brutally disillusioned partisan. The doctor's daughter is wooed by charming Italian Captain Correli's fine musicianship and humanity - though theirs turns out to be a bittersweet romance. The book's massive appeal is also due to its tone, refusing to abandon optimism. The lightness of the early chapters isn't lost site of, despite the war's increasing desperation and absurdity. When a British agent parachutes in, the local goatherd thinks he is an angel, especially when he starts speaking Ancient Greek (rendered as Chaucerian English). For all the sexual burlesque, and the bizarre happenings in his crowded, highly entertaining novels de Bernières is also a moralist: people are brutalised - and saved - by their own natures, whether angelic or satanic. His most creations, Corelli and Señor Vivo, have moral stature, persisting amidst surrounding horrors.
Dr Jules Smith, 2003
Further reading on this site
Walberberg Seminar
The Walberberg Seminar is the British Council's largest and longest running annual literature seminar overseas. The most recent Walberberg Seminar was held in January 2009 at Akademie Schmockwitz, Berlin on... more... (15/12/2004)
Contact information
Publisher (General enquiries)
Secker & Warburg Ltd
Random House Group Ltd
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA
England
Tel: +44 (0)20 7840 8545
Fax: +44 (0)20 7233 6117
http://www.randomhouse.co.uk
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Agent
Lavinia Trevor
The Glasshouse
49a Goldhawk Road
London W12 8QP
England
Tel: +44 (0)20 8749 8481
Fax: +44 (0)20 8749 7377
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