Louis de bernieres biography channel

A novel by Louis de Bernières is like a series of brightly colored and boldly drawn murals that combine into an exotic epic of life, love, and struggle. His first three novels are set in an imaginary South American country and make full use of the stock resources of such a setting: political corruption and malpractice; murder, torture, and violence perpetrated by the military; revolutionary opposition, which sometimes also takes violent forms; drug trafficking and prostitution; machismo and exotic femininity; Roman Catholicism and native magic.

These novels also spring large surprises; for example, a troop of conquistadores, frozen in a glacier for four centuries, who are brought back to life and have to adjust to the modern world. De Bernières's fourth novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, is set on an imaginary Greek island invaded by the Italians during World War II, and, allowing for the difference of place and time, it has many of