I really struggled to get into this - I found there were just too many characters to get my head round. As I am a firm believer in only reading things I enjoy, I gave up and went on to something else!

Aaaahhhh!

How could I have forgotten this gem?

This is what arises when one reads old letters intended for friends that have remained unsent, a kind of temporal journal of misplaced memories in which startling revelations unfold: did I do that? Oh....yes, I remember - that's what happened...ooooh, that wasn't very clever, was it?

So...this book. I have no idea why it was so impressive so many years ago. It just was. Here's what I had to say about it in this long-lost-recently-resurfaced piece of correspondence:

I have started reading another book The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, by Louis de Bernieres. I am alternatively amused at the irony, impressed with the use of language, and appalled at the viciousness of certain of the scenes described. I am envious that I cannot put pen to paper to create a fictitious (or actual) world in which to delineate and resolve my own philosophical conundrums or describe my journeys in time and space. Surely, if people are reading and appreciating these writers, I should find too an audience not threatened or bored by this tumultuous cascade of thoughts and ideas that yearns to find coherent expression through either the written word or the medium of film. Dear ???, do you find my letters entertaining, provoking, or simply eternally desultory spirals predominantly (and preponderantly) concerned with “I”?

As you can see, the piece of correspondence probably had no point in surfacing other than to remind me of the existence of the Don's nether parts.

I last read ‘The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts’ about twenty years ago. I remember it as being a frustrating experience, that for all its colour and vibrancy it was a book which annoyed me. But then, as some books manage to do, it lingered in my mind – like the shadow of some half-forgotten dream – and even though two decades had passed I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something in ‘The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts’ worthwhile exploring further.

So I read it again.

Written before ‘Captain Correli’s Mandolin’ made him extremely famous, Louis de Bernières here conjures up a picaresque, magic-realist exploration of a fictional South American country. We visit a small remote village (where the Don Emmanuel of the title resides), the various ranks of the army, a band of communist guerrilla rebels, Indian tribes and even the President’s office. At its best de Bernières gives us chapters of wit and satire, with jokes that recall Douglas Adams both in construction and the laughter they bring. It is – when on song – a tremendously funny and sharp read which does conjure up the sights, the smells and the idiosyncratic culture of this country.

Unfortunately my reaction of all those years ago was repeated, it is also an incredibly frustrating experience. The book’s wandering through the different strata of society often feels just like meandering. There is very little centre to the narrative, no sense that it is necessarily going anywhere. (For instance, the incident which gives the book its title is forgotten within fifty pages). Some of the chapters are great, but there are others which don’t have that wit and some which are just plain dull. As such this reader didn’t soar with the book towards its conclusion, more plodded towards its arbitrary ending.

So once again I found ‘The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts’ an annoying experience and not the best read I’ve encountered for awhile, but I do have a suspicion it will still be with me in 2033.

I was deeelighted to discover two mint condition Louis de Berniènes novels at the oppie with matching covers to my copy of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which is one of my all time favs

This ripping good read is almost too perfect: written by a no doubt crotchety Englishman, this farce is a distillation of Latin American magical realism, with a plethora of outlandish stories all boiled down into sparkling and colorful set-pieces set loose to writhe on a sultry chessboard of human misery and almost cheerfully morbid political skullduggery.

The prose style is excellent (as twisty but of course far more accomplished than the sample provided by this amateur in the preceding paragraph), and what separates the story from pure farce is the attention to detail and the love for the pure, living and breathing forms of nature in South America. The major lack in this book is a coherence of narrative and character, to the point that it may have made more sense as a short story collection; however, while having all these unrelated stories bumping into each other in Brownian motion may be a little distracting, it certainly is charming.

I was first struck by the cruelty of this book, then by its levity, and then its beauty, and then its cruelty again, and then by its cunning little wisdoms, and then by its visceral moments of justice, and then by its cats, its humor, its cyclical sense of time, then by its cruelty again, and its humor again, and its humble, clever characters, and then, finally, I was struck by its largeness, its enveloping world that, for all its cruelty, for all the torture and the meaningless death, contains magic, wily and clumsy, absurdist and sentimental, magic for the underdogs, and only the underdogs.

It's clearly an homage to Marquez, but there's Vonnegut in there too, and Allende.

One of the reasons it doesn't get 5 stars is that there were just a few to many flippant derogatory descriptors in the book that were clearly meant to be funny and cruel, rather than just offensive and cruel. This was especially true in the descriptions of nonwhite characters and women. The fact that these characters were often the most interesting, honest, and valiant made up for some of the Terentino/Tom Robbins/I'm-an-artist-I-can-write-whatever-words-I-want sort of language.

Another reason I pause to give this book 5 stars, despite how completely in love with it I was at times, is that there really is a lot of violence. Cruel, torturous, devastating violence. One the one hand, this violence did really occur, more or less, in many Latin American countries. There is a sort of 'truth and reconciliation' argument that could be made for putting it in with such graphic detail. It does give the story depth in a certain way: the characters are all shaped by the violence, and so as much as it is common, it never feels completely gratuitous. And yet, and yet, I wonder if the same effect could have been made with more sparing descriptions. I wonder if there's not an element of voyeurism at play...

Louis de Berniers is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. This book is a satirical take on a fictitious Latin American country and is the first magnificent novel of a trilogy. The next two are Senor Vivo and the Coca Lords, and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman. Just reading the titles of his books makes me quiver with anticipation.

Berniers makes you smile with his sly humor, amazes you with magical realism, makes you pensive and nostalgic with beautiful prose yet makes you squirm with horror as he blandly describes atrocities committed by people on each other as war and strife penetrate deep into their lives.

The style of writing, the plot of the story, the quirky and interesting, yet very human characters all contribute in making this an exceptional must read novel.

Roman picaresque en AmSud moderne, le XXe siècle n'est pas si loin. Pays imaginaire mais on y reconnaît toutes les dictatures du coin et de l'époque. Ridiculisées. Côtoyant inévitablement les multiples mouvements révolutionnaires de type communiste ou apparenté. Ridiculisés tout autant.
Fond de vérité incontestable. Ces dictatures ont maintenu des décennies de cruautés avec enrichissement personnel. Et les "gauchistes" libérateurs ont souvent été aussi sanguinaires que le vénéré et idéalisé Guevara.
Le tout traité dans le plus grand burlesque invraisemblable. Beaucoup d'humour (sacrifiant souvent au vulgaire) dans ces tranches de relations sanguinaires. Caustique, évidemment.
Fouilli mais délassant, oui. Mais, si l'époque de ces épopées, sur le même continent, est différente de celle des chefs d'œuvre de Gabriel Garcia Marques, le récit se voulant aussi épique, pas de comparaison entre le génie de Marques et la bouffonnerie de de Bernières. Un peu fatigante.

I started slowly as it took me a while to follow each person’s storyline but after a few chapters I was able to undistractedly appreciate the absolute humour, wit and detail contained in the intertwining lives of the characters.
I also think this is my first induction into magical realism as a genre and I greatly enjoyed the way it was written.

Gave up on this after the first 30 pages or so. I had to re-read lots of sections as so many characters were introduced with crazy amounts of detail about their lives that it was impossible (for me at least) to keep them all straight. This made it quickly become irritating - I have so little time to read I wasn't willing to keep going with this.

I am so impressed (again) by Louis de Bernieres. His ability to immerse himself in different cultures is to be respected. As someone who lives in a Latin American country I can find no fault in his portrayal of the mindsets and thought procsses of his characters. The total corruption is shown honestly but homorously likewise the brutality and machinations of the police and army. He adopts the magical-reality style of Latin American writers and outdoes them at their own game. The huge cast of characters from poor natives, immigrants, people of all colors, guerrillas, clergy, and military
plus all their animals puts the book among my favorites.

Smiech tu striedalo zdesenie. Vyčínanie armády, túžbu po moci a politikárčenie vystihol Louis de Bernieres tak výstižne, že mnohé z toho platí aj dnes v reálnom svete. Kniha mi ale dala zabrať, dej sa skrýval v spleti mnohých príbehov mnohých postáv. Celkovo mi to ale pripomenulo myšlienku Hellerovej Hlavy XXII, vtip a inteligenciu kníh Terryho Pratchetta a samozrejme atmosféru Marquéza a Allende. Výborné aj keď náročnejšie čítanie, aspoň pre mňa.
A pochvala patrí aj Viktorovi Janišovi za preklad, toto bol asi ťažký oriešok.