Captain Corelli's Mandolin, released simultaneously as Corelli's Mandolin in the United States, is a 1994 novel by British writer Louis de Bernières that is set on the Greek island of Cephallonia (Kefalonia) during the Italian and German occupation of World War II.
The main characters are Antonio Corelli, an Italian captain, and Pelagia, the daughter of the local physician, Dr. Iannis. An important event in the novel is the massacre of Italian troops by the Germans in September 1943—the Italian Acqui Division had refused to surrender and fought the Germans for nine days before running out of ammunition. Some 1,500 Italian soldiers died in the fighting, 5,000 were massacred after surrendering and the rest shipped to Germany—although 3,000 drowned when the ship carrying them hit a mine.
In 2003, the novel was listed at number 19 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.