Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
First Edition
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| Author | Louis de Bernières |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical, Romance, War novel |
| Publisher | Secker & Warburg |
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Publication date
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1994 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 544 |
| ISBN | |
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, released simultaneously in the United States as Corelli's Mandolin, is a 1994 novel by the British writer Louis de Bernières, set on the Greek island of Cephalonia during the Italian and German occupation of the Second World War.
The main characters are Antonio Corelli, an Italian army captain, and Pelagia, the daughter of the local physician, Dr Iannis. An important event in the novel is the massacre of Italian troops by the Germans in September 1943—the Italian Acqui Division had refused to surrender and had fought the Germans for nine days before running out of ammunition. Some 1,500 Italian soldiers died in the fighting, 5,000 were massacred after surrendering, and the rest were shipped to Germany, of whom 3,000 drowned when the ship carrying them hit a mine.
In 2003, the novel was listed at number 19 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.
The story begins with Dr. Iannis, an experienced and multilingual doctor who has a well-established practice on the Greek island of Cephallonia. Iannis lives with his daughter Pelagia; Pelagia's mother died of tuberculosis when Pelagia was still a girl. Pelagia, now a young woman, is headstrong and intelligent, and has learned about medicine by observing her father. Some of the subsequent chapters, however, are told from the perspective of Carlo Guercio, a homosexual Italian man who has decided to join the Italian army which has been raised under the rule of Benito Mussolini during World War II.
Pelagia meets a young fisherman named Mandras, and they rapidly become engaged. Meanwhile, war has been declared, and Mandras decides to go fight at the front. Pelagia's letters to him go unanswered. Carlo Guercio fights among the Italian forces that invade Albania, and watches his beloved friend Francisco be shot by the defending Greek army. The Italian army is hopelessly incompetent, and eventually German forces arrive and drive back the Greek army, thus paving the way for Italy to occupy Greece.
In 1941, following the Italian invasion of Greece, Italian and German soldiers are posted to Cephallonia, where they are ostracized by the locals. Pelagia is determined to hate them, especially when a jovial young captain by the name of Antonio Corelli is assigned to live in her home. Mandras comes home from the war, injured and filthy, and as Pelagia nurses him she realizes that she no longer loves him. He admits that he is illiterate, which explains why he never answered Pelagia's letters. Soon after he is recovered, Mandras leaves again to join the underground. Pelagia gradually comes to know Corelli, and discovers that he is conscientious, civilised, humorous and far from fanatical, as well as being a consummate mandolin player. They inevitably fall in love, and become engaged, Pelagia being convinced that Mandras has died.
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Wikipedia