Notwithstanding (Vintage International) - Softcover

"The experience of reading this collection is rather like being wrapped in a tartan blanket and handed a nice mug of cocoa." --The Guardian

"Sketches of lives that settle into the atmosphere of a place and make it unique. . . . The creator of Captain Corelli is fond of an exotic setting and he has found one in his own backyard." --The Times (London)

"A timely examination of the charming and, at times, heart-wrenchingly sad aspects of English village life. . . . De Bernières' alchemy is to turn characters who seem destined for farce into nuanced beings." --Financial Times

"Comic, benignly forgiving and shot through with threads of nostalgic regret. De Bernières has a big heart." --The Independent

"An amusing collection. . . . [De Bernières] perfectly captures the peculiarities, the quirks, and the tenor of a particular time and place with good humor and great affection. 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

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.