From the islanders’ point of view, no charge could be more wounding. The Italian-German confrontation and subsequent massacres were a defining moment of modern Cephalonian history. The only resistance force on the island was ELAS and its political wing, EAM, though neither organisation was exclusively, or even predominantly, communist. Both Greeks and Italian survivors testify that not only did the resistance give practical and armed support to the Italian troops, but 15 andartes lost their lives in the fighting. Far from killing Italians who escaped the German slaughter, the resistance - including the parents of Dionisis Georgatos, Cephalonia’s present-day governor - hid them and helped spirit them off the island. DVD. Condition: Very Good. 2001 DVD Very Good Offered by the UK charity Langdon - working to support young men and women with disabilities. The book's ebullient varieties of speech and narrative make it tempting to call it a "polyphonic novel". The term was invented by the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin in the 1920s to describe Dostoevsky's fiction. Bakhtin praised Dostoevsky for rendering "a plurality of unmerged voices and consciousnesses". He had in mind the novelist's willingness to allow his characters' words and attitudes to predominate over any authorial insights. (Would Captain Corelli's Mandolin always qualify by this test? De Bernières's novel includes passages where a narrator tells us things -such as future events - that none of his characters can know.) Bakhtin initially claimed that Dostoevsky had originated "a fundamentally new novelistic genre", before later deciding that he had instead perfected what had always been a subversive inclination of most interesting fiction. i tell everyone that this is my most favourite-est book ever, and it's still true. i love the weaving of different narratives, and how every character had a soul, even the evil ones. the severity of the war contrasts so poignantly with the simplicity and good humour of everyday life. Makis Faraklos, now the 76-year-old president of the resistance veterans’ association in the Cephalonian town of Lixouri, remembers witnessing the fate of some of those whom de Bernières insists spent the German occupation doing nothing. “On June 5, 1944, the Germans hanged five resistance members in the main square because the andartes had killed a collaborator. They forced everyone they found on the streets to go there and set up four machine guns around us. One of the five, Dionisis Ratsiatos, was my teacher - I loved that man. There was a father and son, Gavrilis and Vasilis Rallatos, and the father was forced to watch his son hanged twice, because the rope broke the first time they strung him up. They hanged them from two trees. The youngest to die that day was Spiros Analitis, in his early 20s. The German commander announced through an interpreter that he would be freed if he gave information about the resistance. Analitis didn’t reply, but called to the crowd, ‘You, tyranny-fighting youth, will avenge our deaths.’ “

I saw this movie first years ago and decided to read the book for clarity on Carlos' role in the story which is quite vague in the movie. Louis de Bernieres' Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a historical fiction that encompasses symbolism, character development and evolving relationships with a look at WWII that is frequently overlooked, the disrupted but mundane lives of those touched by the war in less horrific ways than concentration camps and mass executions. An idyllic island home, a questioned saint and war touched lives that intermingle in touching relationships. Dr. Iannis arranges for Lemoni to take his household to gather snails, as there's little else to eat. Corelli and Pelagia become separated from Dr. Iannis and Lemoni, and they admit that they love each other. Corelli struggles with the fact that the war that brought them together is ruining Greece, which makes Pelagia angry. She tries to prepare the snails but is interrupted when Lemoni visits and Corelli realizes she found a mine. Though the mine is old, Corelli and Carlo decide to blow it up for safety. The entire village and the Italian troops watch. It kills an engineer and covers everyone in sand. Corelli and Pelagia spend as much time as they can kissing, talking about the future, and riding a motorcycle around the island.Dr. Iannis counsels Pelagia and Corelli in turn. He tells Pelagia to wait to marry Corelli until after the war, as that's the only way she'll know if their love is genuine. He tells Corelli that Pelagia has a dark and mysterious other side, as all Greeks do, and cautions him against making plans. Dionisis Georgatos - the elected governor of Cephalonia who negotiated carefully-framed terms for the Corelli film to be made on the island - dismisses de Bernières’s book as “reactionary and wrong”. Nobody, he says, wants to benefit from the film “if it distorts our history - we had many deaths, houses were burned, people hanged in the streets. It is very sensitive. De Bernières clearly used British sources from that time and, of course, they had the role of invaders.” Gerasimos Artelanis, mayor of Sami and, like Georgatos, a member of Greece’s ruling socialist party, Pasok, has threatened to take the film-makers to the International Court of Justice if they include de Bernières’s most controversial claims, thus breaking an undertaking not to inflame political and national sensitivities. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth Different voices find many forms. There are letters; there are political diatribes; there are speeches and sermons. Equally, the chapters of third-person narrative reflect many different viewpoints. Most often we see events through the eyes of Iannis, or Pelagia, or Corelli, but free indirect style gives us the thoughts of many others, from Mina, the mad girl who is to be "cured" by Saint Gerasimos, to Lieutenant Weber, the "good Nazi", confused by the habits of his Italian allies. The collection of narratives is made to enact an understanding of human variety. I liked how little I knew about this book before I read it, so I won't say too much in the way of plot. The characters are delightful and complicated, and the glimpses you get of the non-main characters are intoxicating. De Bernieres provides priceless description and personification of non-humans, including various animal species, musical instruments, and countries. The book comments on politics in a thoughtful way, but doesn't oversimplify or beat you over the head with anything.

Until the 70s, it was still a crime in Greece to have fought against the Nazis in the main wartime resistance movement, while Nazi collaborators received pensions. The role of the ELAS “andartes”, or guerillas, in the liberation was formally recognised by the state only under Andreas Papandreou in the 80s. But, in case any reader might have mistaken his own view, de Bernières included an author’s note in earlier editions of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin to berate “disconnected intellectuals” for regarding the Greek communists as “romantic heroes”, adding, “when they were not totally useless, perfidious and parasitic, they were unspeakably barbaric”. I think part of the problem was that I was expecting something more than I got. It’s a competent enough novel, it was just a little too slow for me, and I do think it would have benefitted from a little extra editing. It’s not exactly supposed to be fast-paced in the first place, and there are some interesting bits of character development. There’s also a lot of talking, too much of it for my liking, and while there are plenty of references to goats throughout, I was expecting it to have some sort of payoff instead of just feeling like a wasted metaphor. Captain Corelli's Mandolin": (Piano Solo) (Faber Edition): Music Inspired by the Novels of Louis de Bernieres I should probably mention that I read this entirely based on http://www.thisonenext.com, and I am quite impressed. This book is absolutely me. Corelli begins to play mandolin for Pelagia and the two talk about their dreams for life after the war. Corelli wants to be a musician and for the first time, Pelagia voices her desire to be a doctor. Though Pelagia and Dr. Iannis continue to torment Corelli, Pelagia finds herself falling for him. She stares at him, touches him without thinking, and becomes gradually less angry with him. Dr. Iannis notices their budding romance and wonders what to do.On the feast day of St Gerasimos, patron saint of the Greek island of Cephalonia, the mummified remains of the holy man are paraded and the islanders become "outlandishly drunk". (The first detail from Louis de Bernières's Captain Corelli's Mandolin is confirmed by the Greek tourist board; the latter is the novelist's embellishment.) In the novel, troupes from different towns loudly strike up rival songs, some fishermen from Panago-poula miraculously managing, over the chatter of the crowd and the crashing of a cannon, to weave "a harmony intricate and polyphonic". "The brotherhood of the sea," declares the narrator, in imitation of the fishermen's bibulous self-congratulation, has produced "conclusive proof of their metaphysical unity".