nether parts

I finished reading The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts last night and found it really enjoyable.

At first, I was a little hesitant because it seemed to be a clear ripoff of Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, but after the first few chapters of Don Emmanuel, I thought it stood on its own.

While both novels deal with the romantic-but-epic-fail nature of the South American revolutionary, and both have dream-like absurdist elements, Solitude read more like a fairytale with a bemused observer painting a picture of the protagonists determinedly marching along towards their inevitable fates whereas De Bernieres takes a more strident and bitter tone, savagely and sardonically ridiculing the sad history of too many South American countries. But he gives his characters more control of their own destiny, and you get the sense that the struggle for good in the face of so much selfishness, greed, and incompetence is indeed worthwhile. Don Quixotes, they’re not.

Highly recommended, both.