Louis de Bernières: 'Having a book made into a film is like losing your virginity'
The world may still be obsessed with Captain Corelli and his mandolin, but Louis de Bernières has moved on – all the way back to the village he grew up in
By Katy Guest writing in The Independent on Sunday

Author photo by Emily Hope.

A meeting with Louis de Bernières is an educative experience. In an hour in his company on a sunny day in September, I learn the Turkish for "son of a whore"; the life cycle of rooks; why one should never bayonet a man between the ribs; and an unhealthy amount about roadkill. He also gives me two shiny conkers: "a present from the countryside". And then, in a nonchalant act that renders me more starstruck than I have ever been in my life, he briefly lets me carry his mandolin. He knows how to make the girls swoon, this one.
I try to be cool about the small black instrument case that he puts in my hand, because it's important to remember there is a lot more to Louis de Bernières than Captain Corelli's Mandolin. He is "very grateful to it and quite proud of it", he says, but it is not the book for which he wants to be remembered. His new collection of stories, Notwithstanding, is a million miles from wartime Kefalonia, set in the English country village where De Bernières grew up. It's a book that he has been writing, story by story, for about 20 years, full of the comedy, the eccentricity and the sharp melancholy that his fans will love.


But this is not the book for which he wants to be remembered, either. There's a contrary side to this irresistibly charming, bestselling author. But then, if you had written a magnificent epic such as Birds Without Wings, or had practically rewritten the wedding vows ("and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two..."), you could afford to be contrary, too.
De Bernières, famously, has mastered a certain sort of densely plotted novel set in a picturesque warm country with compelling characters usually involved in a war. He can barely mention a location in print without provoking a rash of tourism, or an unfortunate film, in the case of Captain Corelli's Mandolin. (Asked if he was happy about the 2001 movie, he once replied, "It would be impossible to be happy about your own baby having its ears put on backwards.") But while he is used to finding inspiration on foreign shores, it took a conversation with a Frenchman to inspire this new book about his own country. "He told me that he adored Britain, because it was so exotic," he explains in an afterword to Notwithstanding. "I realised that I had set so many of my novels and stories abroad, because custom had prevented me from seeing how exotic my own country is."
The full piece at The Independent online.