Book Review: Corelli's Mandolin

I just finished the book Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres. It's about the small Greek island of Cephallonia during World War II. It focuses on one small family consisting of Dr. Iannis and his daughter Pelagia. It tells about Greece's occupation by the Germans and Italians during the war. Oddly enough, it depicts the Italians as being innocent bystanders. You're almost on the Italian's side. We all know that Mussolini was a terrible man and ordered his Italian troops to do terrible things, but this division of Italian soldiers spent their occupation time fending off Germans and falling in love with Cephallonian women. As the book progresses we see a truly unique picture of life in a small town in Greece. I'll admit that the book took a while to get into because there were a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary words, some Italian, Greek, and German, and I honestly didn't know much about the basics of WWII. Once I got into it, it was very good.