War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts
- Book Review,
by Louis de Bernieres
Amazon.com
Louis de Bernières's sardonic pen has concocted a spicy olla podrida of a novel, set in a fictitious Latin American country, with all the tragedy, ribaldry, and humor Bernières can muster from a debauched military, a clueless oligarchy, and an unconventional band of guerrillas. There's a plague of laughing, a flood of magical cats, and a torture-happy colonel. The cities, villages, politics, and discourse are an inspired amalgam of Latin Americana, but the comedy, horror, adventure, and vibrant individuals are pure de Bernières. This masterpiece, the first of a trilogy, is followed by Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord, and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman.
From Publishers Weekly
A blend of scathing political satire and magic realism, De Bernieres's furiously sardonic, intensely lyrical first novel portrays an imaginary, impoverished Latin American country run by an oligarchy, terrorized by fascist army officers and propped up by U.S. support while Yanqui corporations suck its economy dry. No better than the rapacious and murderous military, the revolutionaries loot and kill in the name of an abstract ideal. The motley cast includes Dona Costanza Evans, an upper-class housewife kidnapped by guerrillas, who actively joins the revolution; Olaf Olsen, a Norwegian industrialist whose innocent daughter becomes one of the "disappeared"; Aurelio, a jungle Indian versed in magic, and Don Emmanuel, oddball son of a progressive English educator. About halfway through, friendly, charming cats, which grow to the size of pumas, invade the narrative and do magical things that confound even fascist generals. De Bernieres, who taught in Colombia, captures the beauty, hope and desperation of Latin America as few other writers have done. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This rollicking, disturbing first novel celebrates (or parodies?) the recurrent themes of modern Latin American fiction: politics, corruption, and war; love, sex, and family; nature, religion, and magic. A motley assortment of horrific or hilarious vignettes resolve themselves into an imaginative story set in a troubled, fictional, but familiar South American country. A basically innocent village finds itself the focal point of a clash between a mindlessly brutal military and a nebulous Communist threat. Many trysts and torturings later, the villagers make an exodus to a new Eden, accompanied by sympathetic guerrillas, an Indian guide, and an ever-growing band of large, affectionate cats. As one of the numerous characters points out, "In this country reason does not apply to anything." Recommended for public libraries.- Janet Ingraham, Worthington P.L., OhioCopyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Susan Lowell
...mischievously brilliant...
From Kirkus Reviews
A first novel by a British writer that, somewhat cynically, seems to want to wrap up all things Latin American into one package: myth, politics, comedy, economics, ethnology, geography, you name it. The result is a synoptic mess, filled more with cartoons than with anything else. In an unnamed and representative Andean country, the benevolent nobleman of the title hangs over the book as the kindest, foggiest deity, watching privilege war with poverty, guerrillas with the army, sexual repression with ``natural'' expression. A Navantes Indian girl is killed by a land mine and becomes transfigured into a cat--a cat who ultimately through magical means brings down the corrupt and bankrupt state kept propped up by financial schemes and a renegade army (a torture machine when it isn't being diverted by Falklands-style war fiascos). But de BerniŠres, unlike Garc¡a M rquez and Isabel Allende, his too obvious templates, can't get his scene-lets to nugget or cohere in language that sings: the fabric is patchwork, unsinuous. There is encyclopedic, somewhat condescending filler (``machetes are sharpened assiduously on special boulders in the rivers until they are sharp enough both to shave with and chop down trees. They are used to slaughter animals by decapitation, which is very quick and humane...''), as well as political boilerplate (``Campesinos do not become guerrillas for the same reasons as middle-class intellectuals from towns''), but neither helps forge this into a novel. Synthetic and, worse, mostly a bore. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Book Description
This rambunctious first novel by the author of the bestselling Corelli's Mandolin is set in an impoverished, violent, yet ravishingly beautiful country somewhere in South America. When the haughty Dona Constanza decides to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, the consequences are at once tragic, heroic, and outrageously funny. "Walks a precarious edge between slapstick and pathos, never once losing its balance."--Washington Post Book World.
From the Inside Flap
This rambunctious first novel by the author of the bestselling Corelli's Mandolin is set in an impoverished, violent, yet ravishingly beautiful country somewhere in South America. When the haughty Dona Constanza decides to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, the consequences are at once tragic, heroic, and outrageously funny. "Walks a precarious edge between slapstick and pathos, never once losing its balance."--Washington Post Book World.
About the Author
Louis de Bernieres' novels include The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts (Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best First Book Eurasia Region, 1991), Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord (Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best Book Eurasia Region, 1992), and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman. The author, who lives in London, was selected as one of the twenty Best of Young British Novelists 1993.
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