British · b. 1954
Commonwealth Writers' Prize
British novelist whose Captain Corelli's Mandolin, set on a Greek island during World War II, became one of the best-selling British novels of the 1990s.
Louis de Bernières was born in London in 1954 and educated at the Victoria University of Manchester and at Sandhurst Military Academy. He worked as a teacher in Colombia before beginning his literary career with a South American trilogy before Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994).
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, set on the Greek island of Kefalonia during the Italian and German occupation of World War II, became an unlikely bestseller — largely through word-of-mouth — and eventually sold over two million copies in the UK alone. It won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1995. A film adaptation in 2001 starred Nicolas Cage and Penélope Cruz.
De Bernières has continued writing, including Birds Without Wings (2004), set in Ottoman Turkey, and The Dust That Falls from Dreams (2015). He lives in Norfolk, England, and is also a musician — playing guitar and mandolin, appropriately enough.
by Louis de Bernières
In a small Turkish village in Anatolia, Christians and Muslims have lived together for centuries — until WWI, Gallipoli, the Greek-Turkish War, and the population exchanges of the 1920s destroy everything. A companion in scope and grief to Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
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by Louis de Bernières
On the Greek island of Kefalonia during the Italian and German occupation of World War II, a young woman falls in love with an Italian officer while her fiancé fights with the partisans in the mountains.
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by Louis de Bernières
The second South American novel — a professor of philosophy in a Colombian city writes letters to the newspaper denouncing the drug cartels, and falls in love, as the coca lords begin to notice him.
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by Louis de Bernières
The first novel in Louis de Bernières's South American trilogy — a magical realist tale of a Colombian village caught between a corrupt landowner, the army, and guerrillas, as a British woman tries to divert the river to water her garden.
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by Louis de Bernières
In 1970s London, a middle-aged travelling salesman is captivated by a young Yugoslav woman named Roza, who claims to be a prostitute and tells him stories about her father — a partisan in Tito's Yugoslavia — that may or may not be true.
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by Louis de Bernières
The final South American novel — Cardinal Guzman's son leads a new Inquisition through the Colombian countryside, while the village of Cochadebajo survives through community, love, and the supernatural.
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All Louis de Bernières novels in order — from the South American trilogy to Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Birds Without Wings. Complete guide with reading order and best starting points.
guide
New to Louis de Bernières? Captain Corelli's Mandolin is the right starting point for most readers — but this guide matches different reader types to the right entry point.
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