Product Description

Dionisio Vivo, a South American lecturer in philosphy, is puzzled by the hideously mutilated corpses that keep turning up outside his front door. To his friend, Ramon, one of the few honest policement in town, the message is all too clear: Dionisio's letters to the press, exposing the drug barons, must stop; and although Dionisio manages to escape the hit-men sent to get him, he soon realises that others are more vulnerable, and his love for them leads him to take a colossal revenge.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5395 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Louis de Bernières is a masterful writer, which is to say his command of the various crafts of writing--creating character, innovative description, telling a whopping good story--weaves a spell and sucks you into the magic. From the moment Dionisio Vivo and Ramón "Cochinillo" Dario attend to the cravate corpse deposited in his garden by the coca lords, you become ensconced in the world of Ipasueño, its passions, ironies and political intrigues, and cease to be aware of the hand of Bernières behind the scenes.

Dionisio, a professor of philosophy, writes a series of letters, published in the prestigious journal La Prensa, castigating the coca trade, and from there the story spins furiously in many directions and subplots. There's the love affair of the century between Dionisio and Anica Moreno, Lazaro's tragic dance with leprosy, and--to the great pleasure of fans of Bernières's previous novel, The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts--further interactions with the magical jaguars and human inhabitants of Cochadebajo de los Gatos. Events take their course in the way of a grand tragicomedy, with the devastation that's expected followed by the irrepressible joy of life that's never expected and Bernières's tongue-in-cheek touch throughout.

It's a delightfully mesmerising book. Set in a mythical South American country that's a composite of real South American history and Bernières's fertile imagination, and therefore a perfect companion to take on a south-of-the-border vacation--the book is awash in the realities and flavour of South America and the lunacies of Bernières's genius. --Stephanie Gold

About the Author
Louis de Bernieres has written several novels including,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), The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman, Red Dog and Birds Without Wings. De Bernieres was selected as one of the Granta twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993. Captain Corelli's Mandolin won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best Book,1995.

Customer Reviews

A wonderful book (again !)
This is a wonderful book that continues with many of the characters from his first book (The war of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, which I thought had a slightly keener edge). His idiosyncratic style of a multiplicity of threads with very short chapters takes a little getting used to but is so effective once you've got the hang of it.

Although it is a superb book, you'll enjoy it even more if you have knowledge of Spanish and/or Portuguese since he pokes gentle fun using these languages.

Louis de Bernieres is a wonderful author who writes well constructed English that is a pleasure to read. I promise you won't be disappointed by this book, but DO read Don Emmanuel first. (I haven't been paid to say this - honestly!)

Perfect Books
I actually read this book first of the South American trilogy and it did not diminish my enjoyment at all. I just love these books - the language is poetical, you feel every emotion from shock to humour to disgust to sympathy. How I wish I could visit Cochadebajo de los Gatos! If you haven't read Louis de Bernieres' books before they do take a bit of getting used to but believe me it is well worth it and you will be hooked!

Such fine fretwork by a narrative musician
There is, I think, much music in everything de Bernieres has written. "Sunday Morning..." is a score sheet for voices and accents; "Corelli" is filed with the strings and the song of Italian opera; and the South American trilogy is suffused with a tropical rhythm all of its own. The man Louis himself, so I believe, is something of a musical enthusiast.

And as with all good music, there should be drink, there should be women and there should be magic. When these collide, of course, then there will be violence. In "Senor Vivo" there is, in abundance.

But it as vicious and as hard as it is romantic and poetic. And it is the balance of these factors - as with "Corelli" - that makes this book so fantastic, in both senses of the word. You can laugh and you can marvel at the tantric science of the President's lovemaking, but you will soon crumble at the prospect of what happens to Vivo's little Bugsita. The horror takes your breath away. And it is good for a book about the drugs trade to be so visceral. Amongst the fantasy there is a very real and very vivid truth being told.

The previous reviewer evidently disagrees. They are wrong. "Opinion, opinion..." you might well think, but no, then you would be wrong. It is not simply the facile "po-mo", "lit. crit." generally jargonese dismissal of magic realism that is misplaced (the magic of the book, in fact, is an evocation of the spiritual jungle and sierra Indians and their influence on the culture of this South American Erehwon), but the whole tenor of the argument is predicated on a lie. The book is not self-indulgent, it does not have an overarching personal agenda and it certainly does not disenfranchise the emotions of the reader. What it does is entertain, gloriously.

The narrative is never forced, but instead it plays out delicately in front of you with interweaving narratives and intimate portraits of endless fascinating characters. And yes, it does have a political message, but it is not forced down the reader's throat ("inexcusably pornographic", really, just no). Rather it cuts to the core in the most direct and clinical of ways. We may read about the coca trade in Colombia, but it's a far away, unrealised and dismissable problem - "yeah, I've heard there's a war going on over there. Don't suppose anyone cares though...they're all on drugs". In "Senor Vivo" the laughter dies on the cold reality of torture. And never are we more sober than when the joke is cut short.