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As the world around it marches forward, the bucolic English village of Notwithstanding remains unchanged.
It is, as it always has been, a place of pubs and cricket pitches, where local eccentrics - a retired colonel who has eschewed clothes, a spiritualist living with the ghost of her husband, and a dog named Archibald Scott-Moncrieff - almost fit in. In this delightfully evocative collection of stories, in which a young couple falls in and out of love by letter alone, an eleven-year-old boy battles a monstrous fish, and a man of the cloth has a premonition of death, Louis de Bernières conjures up a rural idyll long since forgotten. Funny, bittersweet, and deeply felt, Notwithstanding is the bestselling author of Corelli's Mandolin at his most enchanting.
Paperback original
"Mild and nostalgic, a fictionalized expansion of childhood memories that harks back to seemingly safer, simpler times." - Kirkus
"Readers will enjoy being transported to Notwithstanding , where they will be introduced to a variety of colorful characters, whose lives are linked together by an accident of location and an abundance of community spirit. Each individual story is a delightful nugget; the collection as a whole, a delectable feast." - Booklist
"If De Bernières doesn't always succeed in keeping sentimentality at bay, I suspect he doesn't give a hoot. He cares deeply for this vision of a vanished, or vanishing, English rusticity. He knows his ideals are outmoded but has the confidence born of sure knowledge." - The Independent
"In Notwithstanding De Bernières both describes and defends a vision of Britain that many might cherish and share, but also speaks up for his own very particular brand of nuttiness." - The Guardian
This information about Notwithstanding (Vintage International) was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Louis de Bernières works include A Partisan's Daughter, Birds Without Wings, Red Dog, Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World, Corelli's Mandolin (Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best Book, 1995), The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord (Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best Book, Eurasia Region, 1992), The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best Book, Eurasia Region, 1991), The Dust that Falls from Dreams and So Much Life Left Over He was selected by Granta as one of the twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993.
Link to Louis de Bernieres's Website
Name Pronunciation
Louis de Bernieres: LOO-ey duh BAIR-nee-air
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