'Pelagia knew that it was unwise to be indignant with a Nazi officer, even a former friend, but she had too much anger and grief buried alive inside her. Like one entombed by an avalanche, it tried to claw its way out even as it suffocated for want of air and light.'
From Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
Life: His very name, no nom de plume, oozes sophistication. Literary critics harp on about his 'elegant Latinate constructions'. All the same, Louis de Bernieres is, it seems, as earthy as the agonised individuals he describes and not someone you would want to cross unless you thrive on abasement.
The British Marxist Morning Star daily found out the hard way when one of its reviewers panned Captain Corelli's Mandolin, lambasting the author for depicting the Greek communists as 'dehumanised sadists' and casting the 'Italian Fascist army, the force which exterminated one third of the population of Libya, to name but one of its crimes, as a collection of amiable buffoons'.
Rather than ignore the attack, which, given the Morning Star's circulation, would probably have gone unnoticed, de Bernieres went nuclear. 'How long are you people going to sit in the dark in an airpocket, ******* each other off?' he asked.
His letter elaborated: 'Your ship has sunk, brothers. It was historically inevitable and just now the historical conditions have been fulfilled. Goodbye to the biggest failure and disappointment since the non-return of Christ.'
This response drew reverence from just about every other newspaper that covered the book.