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Adult Books - Fiction - Historical Fiction
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Corelli’s Mandolin.
De Bernieres, Louis (author).
Sept. 1994. 448p. Pantheon, hardcover, $24 (0-679-43644-8).
REVIEW.
First published September 15, 1994 (Booklist).
This novel, set on the idyllic Greek island of Cephallonia, follows the lives of its inhabitants from the peaceful days before World War II through the Italian occupation of the island into the present. It is funny, heartbreaking, and horrifying in its fictional testimony to the changes the war exacts on the drunken town priest, the bumpkin fisherman, the gay man who enlists in the army before the war, and the other townspeople. The story centers around a family that includes a widowed, enlightened doctor working on a biased history of the island in his spare time; his clever, independent daughter; and Captain Antonio Corelli, a responsible but irrepressible officer of the Italian garrison who is also a musician and leader of the latrine opera club La Scala. Corelli’s Mandolin delightful and sad, comic and at the same time nearly unbearable in its portrayal of European darkness during the war, is a tour de force depiction of the triumph of life over evil by one of Europe’s great comic writers of our time.— Greg Burkman
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