In spite of its dark theme, this book made me laugh aloud on several occasions. I had to hide behind the sofa when I got to the torture scenes, but i understand why these were included. The presence of Colombian life is strong, and could only have been achieved by someone who had lived there. Overall definitely a good read.

The had his usual wonderfully lyrical prose that somehow makes it easier to comprehend or accept the horrific violence that takes place throughout, although I didn't love this one as much as the first and last books in the trilogy. I think that had more to do with the fact that I read the final one before this, being to anxious to keep reading as I waited for my copy of this to arrive in the mail, so much of the tragedy here seemed almost anti-climactic, and the ending seemed strangely rushed or detached. I'd anticipated so much of Dionisio's amazing act of revenge but instead, it was presented as almost an afterthought, yet many other events (which I won't detail to avoid spoilers) go on in explicit detail to the point where I was skipping pages to get on with it. Again, that may be because of my already knowing largely what happens, so I'm giving this 4 stars for the beautiful writing and amazing characters. And one day, I will reread this trilogy in proper sequel and relive this magical world all over again.

I remember falling in love with this book almost instantly. It has a different cover in the Czech Republic and that was what initially drew me to the book and I have not regretted it. It is not my typical story and I had to turn to the Spanish dictionary at the end of a book more often that not..but it was not (that) annoying, surprisingly. I followed the story and looking up the words did not seem like a nuisance, it was exciting (it has something to do with the fact that there was a LOT of "adult" language). I was 17 when I read this book and it should also be mentioned that I was really into reading Marquez and Borges, so magical realism was not news to me - I loved it, devoured it. For the lack of a better word, I find this type of literature magical (oh, how ORIGINAL) because you feel like it´s real and then something happens (I do intend to spoil anything, so I´m not saying what it was) and you you think, well, this can´t be real, but then again, it´s magical. Wow, my vocabulary is so diverse....

AND since half of the words in the book are in Spanish, this is where I learned spanish swear words, yay.

One of my top 10 books ever!! Amazing historical fiction. Dreamy!

We're in Cochadebajo de los Gatos, a town nestled in the Andes Mountains where enormous black jaguars, completely tame and regarded by inhabitants with friendly awe, patrol the streets. Magic realism, you say? Of course! However, this town in an unnamed country resembling Colombia is also the place where the tale's main character, Dionisio Vivo, wakes up to find a corpse in his garden - a crumpled young man in a bloodstained shirt with his tongue sticking out from the slit in his throat in what drug lords term a cravate. It's this combination of the fantastic and the brutally realistic that prompts critics and reviewers to liken Louis de Bernières to Gabriel García Márquez.

Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord is the British author's second volume of his Latin American Trilogy; however, this superb work can be read as a standalone novel.

I listened to a provocative interview where Louis de Bernières spoke about his writing of Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord. A few striking statements are noteworthy, including how he sees himself as old-fashioned, an author who values narrative and character above all else. He also emphasized the need to provide the reader with a fully developed location: he envisions the novel's setting, its location, as a character as alive as any person gracing the pages. More specifically, in Señor Vivo, he wanted to drive home the fact that any romantic notions about war are completely misguided – war is cruel, vicious, and barbaric, giving rise to sadism that results in extreme, unspeakable suffering and hardship, especially among women and children.

There’s so much going on in this sumptuous, multilayered tale. It's not for nothing that A. S. Byatt places Louis de Bernières in the direct line of great British novelists, following Charles Dickens and Evelyn Waugh. To give a taste of what the reader is in store for, here’s a highlight reel from Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord:

Dionisio Vivo, One – There's good reason our twenty-eight-year-old main man wakes up to corpses in his garden or a hand nailed to his front door: Dionisio, a philosophy professor at the local college, has taken to writing scathing letters that are published in a newspaper reaching all corners of his country. These letters detail the evils of the coca traders, such as scouring the countryside for very young girls who are abducted and raped continuously over several days by the coca lords and their lackeys, then either killed or dumped, bound and gagged, anywhere in town. Reading these letters myself, I could feel my stomach turn.

Dionisio Vivo, Two – One of the more endearing parts of the novel is Dionisio falling deeply in love with Anica Moreno, a tall, beautiful twenty-year-old with strawberry blonde hair and gray eyes who moves with captivating grace and aspires to be a great painter and photographer. Louis de Bernières writes of their love and lovemaking with sweet tenderness. “Voluptuously he soaped her all over until every bit of her was covered with such froth that she took on the appearance of being feathered with down. He took her breasts reverently, one in each hand, and massaged them upward with conscientious circling motions so that her nipples were teased and began to shrink and harden into buds.” But...but...but, we can ask, does being Dionisio's lover involve an element of danger? You bet it does.

Coca Lord – Meet the local kingpin, Pablo Ecobandodo aka El Jerarca: a self-centered lout, despicable dodo, and disgusting fat pig. Stereotypes can be easy to fall into, but in the case of this swine, all the negative ones are a perfect fit.



Ramón Dario - This gentleman is that rare creature: a police officer who doesn't take bribes. A friend and blood brother to Dionisio, Ramón urges his friend to stop writing those letters that amount to nothing less than a death wish. In Ramón's version of a perfect world, Dionisio would take Anica on the next flight leaving the country.

Dionsio Vivo, Three – Driving his ancient car out of town, Dionisio and Anica look forward to a picnic in the country. Unfortunately, they're headed to where El Jerarca's men have set up a roadblock. The drug lord's plan is to stage an accident that will make it look like Dionisio lost control of his car and plunged into a ravine. Suddenly, along the way, Dionisio turns off and drives his car into a cliff face. Anica screams and hides her face. Moments later, Anica can see they've entered a cave where creepers completely hide the opening. As far as El Jerarca's men are concerned, the pesky philosophy professor has, as if by magic or voodoo, vanished. This incident adds to Dionisio's mythic status, making him seem like a powerful brujo, a sorcerer who can quash or reverse assassination attempts or any other action meant to cause him harm.

Rainforest Devastation – A man by the name Lazaaro passes through a shantytown where destitute migrant workers, greedy opportunists, and romantic optimists are mining for gold. “In the great pits men were working like termites, carrying their pails of mud up the sliding, glistening faces of these arbitrary holes in the earth. They were burrowing amid the heaps of spoil, slaving by the river, poisoning both it and themselves with the mercury of the separation process.” And downstream Indians die from eating fish poisoned with the metal.

Tantalizing Tickler - Gabriel García Márquez has stated repeatedly that the opening sentence in his novels carries enormous weight. Take a gander at the first sentence in this novel where the country's President engages in a bit of reflection. “Ever since his young wife had given birth to a cat as an unexpected consequence of his experiments in sexual alchemy, and ever since his accidental invention of a novel explosive that confounded Newtonian physics by loosing its force at the precise distance of 6.56 feet from the source of its blast, President Veracruz had thought of himself not only as an adept by also as an intellectual.”

What I've highlighted above is just a few slivers of this incredibly rich tale, told by an author with a breathtaking imagination—where magic meets realism, and gut-wrenching tragedy meets idealism and romanticism. How can it all possibly turn out? For Louis de Bernières to tell.


British author Louis de Bernières, born 1954

How one of Colombia's most naive citizen's got to be a hero, & what really happened along the way.
I'm not sure I 'got it' all along the way, but I enjoyed the story. de Bernieres pulled me in with the premise that a professor of philosophy was going to fight (& beat) the local coca lords, but I didn't know how. I just had to read the rest to find out.

Philosophy, distilled: "I do not want you to believe any of this because it is all crap, but it is crap in which the piles of our pseudo-European culture are embedded, so you had better understand it because no one who does not understand the history and taxonomy of crap will ever come to know the difference between crap and pseudo-crap and non-crap..." (233).

Really enjoyed this book, I think that’s been clear by my frequent updates on it.
Shed a tear or two by the end.
I read a review that likened de Berniere to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and although I haven’t yet read the latter, I think I’m even more inclined to now (he is on the tbr list, but just a little ways down)

I’m not sure I entirely loved the ending however, and I’m ready to begin the third book as soon as I get home which will hopefully salvage the slight despair I currently feel.
Again, will reiterate how much I love Dionisio and Anica’s love, but also his friendship with Ramon! Their love and tenderness was so beautiful!

Very glad to have gotten back into this world. I too would love a large black pet jaguar that loyally follows me around. Two.

Even better than the first in the trilogy, The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, this book benefits from being shorter, more tightly plotted and more focused than its wonderful but rambling predecessor. Whereas the first entry in the series ambitiously set out to explore and skewer widespread political corruption, military corruption, bureaucratic ineptitude, civil war and generational poverty, Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord sets its targets on one theme; South American drug culture (and the mobs that grow up around distribution and the impact of addiction and crime on impoverished communities) and lets the novel be in service of that theme. Likewise, in contrast to the sprawling ensemble that peopled its predecessor, this text has a clearly defined protagonist- characters from the first novel do drift in and out like old friends paying a visit, but most of this is in service of Dionisio's story.

Един човек, въоръжен с перо, воюва срещу наркокартелите: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/s...

Често се налага да се плъзнеш встрани от действителността, за да я предадеш в цялата й абсурдна реалност. “Сеньор Виво и Наркобарона” е едновременно слънчева и сенчеста приказка за борбата на обикновения човек с многоликото и несъкрушимо зло, в което оръжия като прямотата и истината се сблъскват с коварството и безскрупулността – но книгата на Луи де Берниер отива отвъд баналната измамна победа на доброто и навлиза в джунглата на магическия реализъм ала Маркес. Тук може да се случви всичко, дори да се преживее нереално щастлива любов, но тук може и ще откриваш трупове в градината си, а близките ти ще са под непрестанна угроза от жестока, мъчителна смърт. И ще умират за теб, за твоята борба – тая цена трябва да бъде заплатена безусловно.

Издателство Лабиринт
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/s...

This story set in South America, written by British author de Bernieres’, is both a love story and a story of violence and horror. It is fantastical, full of magical realism and humor which helps with the horror of violence but in the end it is mostly a very dark story of drug cartel violence and one man’s efforts to make a change in some way through his letters to the newspaper and in the end he loses everything but wins the battle.

Wish I could give 3.5 or 3.75... Enjoyable, particularly for its elements of magic realism. I loved how (amongst other more fantastic things--) large tame jaguars could roam the streets alongside more 'real' elements of a late 20th century story. Many witty bits, some laugh aloud funny. But, I enjoyed the first half much more than the second... it started to lose it's charm and humour a bit. But, overall a good story with a clear moral perspective.