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Latin American
Historical Fiction
Magical Realism

Books like The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts

The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts

This is the type of book I really relish: Epic, with myriad POVs &, therefore, too, a plethora of characters: satirical, tragicomic. How can somebody possibly populate this South American Question Mark of a Town? de Bernieres is on the same line as Tolkien and John Kennedy Toole-- his characters are fleshy and complicated. The war is fought at many angles and everybody has a part to play.Don Emmanuel makes a "Queen-Elizabeth-in-"Shakespeare in Love""-like cameo (Dame Judy Dench... in all her splendor), & yet his name is bestowed upon the title; not Remedios, the Guevaraesque woman, the main revolutionary, nor her fellow guerillas (all of which are underdogs and Suffer, yet constantly fight for freedom as in all the best of narratives). It is not "Dona Costanza's Sexual Awakening". It is not "Holocaust in the Tropics". It has a silly, quirky title, and it is exactly this: a silly, quirky novel. It is also relevant, it is bittersweet, it is complex. It is more than one thinks it is. It would fit perfectly with "Slumdog"... dead serious, yet heartfelt to the nth degree (the atrocious rapes and killings are dispersed among vignettes of intense happiness and the unification of native peoples).There is also the clever prose, the important pseudo-irrelevancies, the constant flights of fancy. De Bernieres obviously has much fun inventing.Gabriel Garcia Marquez is serious and poignant; this more modern storyteller has a larger sense of humor and takes a less direct approach with symbolism; the population of the little besieged town is all of a sudden plagued with cats: the townspeople care about them and integrate them into their rural lives. The cats then become panthers... though there is an obvious exodus, there is, too, a return to a mother land. Oh yes- & according to the Santa figure that is the jolly Don Emmanuel, a cure for the war is... yes, sex. How more simple can it get in its complexity?

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