Louis de Bernieres hatırına 3 yıldız verdim ama kitabı geçtiği coğrafya itibariyle pek sevemedim. Baya uzak geldiğinden midir nedir Latin Amerika'da geçen kitaplara ısınamıyorum.

Much like its predecessors, there’s a lot that’s good in this absurdist, magical realist history of a small South American country, but there’s a lot that’s average, and there’s some that’s actually quite bad. ‘The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman’ essentially weaves together numerous different narratives concerning various comic characters and exaggerated grotesques – some of which link together, some of which only brush arms – so that the results are almost by design disjointed and variable. When it’s good the book is clever and amusing, when it’s bad it’s self-satisfied and smugly amused.

If there’s a theme it’s the terrors of rigid beliefs, and how one fixed system is bound to suffer when it clashes with all the rich variety of life. Cardinal Guzman inadvertently allows a new crusade to be called in his little country, and it’s up to a small city – each of whose citizens are blessed with absurdity – to stop it. If the book focused solely on that tale I might like it more, but there are so many diversions, so many fizzled out tales (the saga of Cardinal Guzman himself is particularly anti-climactic) and the result is a jumbled rag-bag of a novel where the author frequently seems to be having more fun than the reader.

In the prologue there’s a fantastic comic image of Coca-Cola paying to have their logo painted right across the face of the moon. But as the lunar winds take hold, the logo breaks up and it looks to the people of the Earth as if the moon is bleeding. It’s a wonderful visual, but one that’s barely mentioned again for the rest of the book. Thus reinforcing the notion that de Bernières is happy here to just throw paint at the wall and doesn’t really care if the whole coalesces.

Poslední část latinsko-americké trilogie je věnovaná církvi a náboženství a za mě je to nejslabší kniha z kompletu. Je možné, že jak jsem to četla celé za sebou, tak už se dostavila únava, také asi mělo vliv, že jsem to četla rozsekané na malé kousky díky pracovnímu shonu, ale nějak jsem se prostě nemohla začíst.

Celé to tažení proti novým albigenským mi přišlo přitažené za vlasy a časově mě to vrhalo někam do středověku, byť děj se odehrává v druhé polovině dvacátého století - tak to bylo mimo čas, a vlastně i prostor. Samotná postava kardinála Guzmána byla hodně zajímavá, kapitoly věnované jeho běsům jsou z celé knihy asi nejlepší a ten jeho "čin" je opravdu strašlivý, takže to finální vykoupení mi přišlo trochu přes čáru.

Když se zpětně zamýšlím nad celou trilogií, tak je to pro mě především o síle moci a především o její korumpovatelnosti - ne snad z ekonomických důvodů, to tady až takovou roli nehraje, ale moc opravdu korumpuje, činí z lidí polobohy, kteří si mohou dělat, co uznají za vhodné a jak jednou překročí Rubikon, tak není cesty zpět. Tím je to všechno myslím velmi aktuální - protože Rubicon je jen o něco větší potok a překračuje se velmi lehko, ale ty následky jsou nedozírné pro všechny.

Určitě nelituji, že jsem trilogii přečetla celou, ale nejsilnější pro mě zůstává první díl - Válka o zadnici Dona Emmanuela.

Kontext: Během čtení jsme měla trochu čtecí krizi a především bylo takové práce, že na zasednutí s knížkou nebyl vůbec čas a večer jsem padala únavou po dvou stránkách - takže se mi to čtení trošku protáhlo :-)

První věta: "K těmto událostem došlo krátce poté, co se nejmocnějšímu světovému výrobci nealkoholických nápojů podařil husarský reklamní kousek, který v moderních dějinách nemá obdoby."

Poslední věta: "Vzato kolem a kolem to pro Jeho Excelenci prezidenta Encisa Veracruze byl velmi neblahý týden."

This book was very entertaining and probably made me laugh out loud more than any I've read in a while. However, the author seemed to lose focus from the previous two editions of this trilogy. I was confused for about the first three-fourths of the book as to where the author was taking the plot, or if there even was one. He seemed to be content to focus on using the dialogue and events to make fun of clergy, to shock the reader, to tell funny antecdotes, and to make veiled attacks on every form of government in the world. He also failed to develop any of the new characters as well as in the previous books and seems to have counted on the reader to have recently read and be quite familiar with his characters from the first two books of the trilogy. I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out who/what he was talking about for much of the book. The grotesque graphic nature of this book also seemed to be a departure from the other two, which alluded to some things but didn't really need to have it all graphically portrayed. The plot seemed to all come together in the last few pages, but at that point was probably not necessary and really didn't add to the book.

This is the final and weirdest book in De Bernieres Magical Realist Latin American Trilogy. Set in a fictional South American country. We return to the wildly eccentric inhabitants of the tiny Andean village of Cochadebajo de Los Gatos, where sleek black jaguars are treated like pets and roam freely through the streets joined by Marxist guerilla fighters, resurrected conquistadors, whores , levitating priests and ghosts. As is typical with magical realism, there are elements of the plot that are feasible and believable except for aspects that clearly aren't. The plot centres on the tormented Cardinal Guzman, who is having a crisis of conscience and decides to sanction a religious purge partly to bring to an end the torments of various demons. Not wanting to spoil the plot the good ( ?) Cardinal ends up leaving the priesthood to search for the son who he may or may not have killed by throwing him into a river thinking he was a demonic donkey with a large penis.
The Cardinal’s rash decision to appoint a fanatical monsignor to head up a New Albigensian Crusade to rid the country of heretics using many of the same graphic methods that were used in the inquisition. The Cardinal eventually repents of his rash decision but not before his orders have been cruelly carried out under the direction of the monsignor, a great fan of St. Thomas Aquinas.
De Bernieres' thinly veiled satirical commentary on the Church’s misguided attempts to enforce its dogmas and teachings throughout history was quite hard hitting but it made it quite confusing for the reader as there were several plots going on at once at in several locations. There was a fair bit of tying up of loose ends in this last book in the trilogy and it ended on a note of karma with the terrible president who had been away in the USA getting a penis extension ( what is it with genitalia in this book) being impeached while his feet were stuck in the toilet. His replacement takes guidance from the Archangel Gabriel which perhaps indicates that nothing changes in this fictional country.
If you are interested in this book you have to read the two previous novels as nothing will make any sense if you don't and maybe only a little bit more sense if you do.

The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman is the hilarous sequel to The War of Don Emmanuels Nether Parts and continues the history of the surreal South American country which de Bernieres created in that book.

The president is still undertaking his bizarre search for sexual fulfilment with his ex-stripper wife, this time travelling to Paris for the fitting of a mechanical device to extend the length of his erections.

The government continue with their unbelievable corruption to govern the country in their inept manner, staging pretend assasinations,petioning FIFA to have a penalty decision against the country reversed and funding guerillas.

Cardinal Guzman is visited by a pantheon of private demons and in an effort to rid himself of them he launches a horrifying Inquisition upon the country. The Inquisition descend upon the unsuspecting populace to root out heresies and unbelievers.

The citizens of Cochadebajo de los Gatos continue to establish their idyllic neo-civilisation in the mountains, the ex-whores, ex-guerillas, de-frocked priest and giant black cats living their lives apart from the rest of the country. They entertain the British Ambassador, bring down a helicopter and finally come to a spectacular confrontation with the Inquisition.

I loved this book as much as Don Emmanuel and Captain Corelli, Louis de Berniers writing style is wonderful, his sense of humour is perverse and slightly black but very entertaining. The characters introduced in Don Emmanuel are here enlarged upon and we grow to love them even more, along with the new friends we meet.

This book is unlike anything else you will have read and is a wonderfully imaginative story which will keep you entertained throughout. I read it on holiday in about two days and loved it.

Enjoy.

another worthy story from one of the great storytellers, this time in Colombia or thereabouts (never stipulated); condemnation of the Catholics; a good insight into the way that Mulatto/Mestizo culture has become so much a part of everyday acceptance in South America - one of the better legacies of the Spaniards; brilliantly researched; plausible yarn beautifully written

a fitting end to the trilogy all becomes a tad too magical but the three books are so much fun it's hard to be critical

Very rarely do I not finish a book. I just could not finish this one...

How did I miss this? So much fun...tempered with horrors. (Last book in a trilogy...)

Rather a peculiar book in some of its characterization, but very interesting historically, nonetheless.

V prvním díle jsme tu měli tajnou policii a občanskou válku, ve druhém jsme potkali narkobarony a gangy, a teď jsme do třetice dostali náboženské fanatiky rozhodnuté spasit celý svět, i kdyby ho měli kvůli tomu vyhladit. Je zajímavé že nakonec to vždycky končí stejně, v krvi a smrti, a nejvíc to pokaždé odnesou ti, kteří s tím mají nejmíň společného.
Potkáte tu spoustu postav z prvního i druhého dílu, zdá se, že všechny cesty nakonec nevedou do Říma, ale do Cochadebajo de los Gatos. A tam se chystají na obranu proti novodobým křižákům, čili máte se na co těšit.
A abych to úplně shrnul, tohle je v každém případě výborná série kterou můžu každému jen doporučit a Louis de Bernières je bez debaty vynikající spisovatel. Čili už tu mám od něj připravených řadu dalších věcí a těším se co s tím provede tentokrát.