Featured Reading Guide
Louis de Bernieres
When the spoilt and haughty Dona Constanza tries to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, she starts a running battle with the locals. The skirmishes are so severe that the Government dispatches a squadron of soldiers led by the fat, brutal and stupid Figueras to deal with them. Despite visiting plagues of laughing fits and giant cats upon the troops, the villagers know that to escape the cruel and unusual tortures planned for them, they must run. Thus they plan to head for the mountains and start a new and convivial civilisation.
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Louis de Bernières is the best-selling author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Best Book in 1995. His most recent novel is A Partisan s Daughter
topAbout the Book
When the spoilt and haughty Dona Constanza tries to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, she starts a running battle with the locals. The skirmishes are so severe that the Government dispatches a squadron of soldiers led by the fat, brutal and stupid Figueras to deal with them. Despite visiting plagues of laughing fits and giant cats upon the troops, the villagers know that to escape the cruel and unusual tortures planned for them, they must run. Thus they plan to head for the mountains and start a new and convivial civilisation.
topLouis de Bernieres interview/review
From an article in The Independent, July 1991 by Louis de Bernières
“I applied for a scholarship which the army foolishly granted, thus encumbering themselves with an 18-year-old officer cadet who thought that he was Bob Dylan. Four months later, in order to save my sanity, I bought myself out. Desperate to escape the reproach in the eyes of my family… I obtained a job working on a ranch in Colombia, where I met many of the characters who were later to embellish my narratives, and where I heard of the incident which was to become the opening chapter of my first novel. In that improbable country I absorbed an outlook that was forever to prevent me from feeling easy in my own culture…
I devoted 10 years to avoiding a career because one day I was going to be a writer. I wrote little, however, until I bought an immense Russian motorcycle. One day I drove over a pothole… and found myself immobilised in plaster for six months… I was left with nothing to do but learn to play the banjo and sift through my short stories, aborted philosophical musings, and appalling poetry.
I rediscovered my story about the murder of 10 people by an army unit that was pretending to be eliminating communists, and I thought ‘Maybe I could turn this into a novel.’ The resultant research caused me to accumulate enough passion to write The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts.”
topStarting Points for Discussion
- Many of de Bernières’s characters appear to be fantastical. Do you think the characters function as representational types, or are they developed in their own right?
- The battle horrors of Chiriguana and the torture parlours of Asado and El Electricista are treated with a macabre humour. How do you react to this juxtaposition of humour and horror?
- What kind of issues do you feel might be involved for a British author writing about such radically different cultures?
- Do you think that the episodic structure of the narrative enhances or detracts from the plot of the novel?
- The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts is cited as an example of magical realism. What do you understand this to mean, and to what effect do you think de Bernières employs it here?
- Sex and politics are central themes in The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts. To what extent do you think these issues are inter-dependent?
Other Books by Louis de Bernieres
A Partisan’s Daughter
Chris is in his forties: bored, lonely, trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage…
Birds Without Wings
Set against the backdrop of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, the Gallipoli ca…
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin…
It is 1941 and Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to…
Suggested Further Reading
- Captain Corelli’s Mandolin ~ Louis de Bernières
- Catch 22 ~ Joseph Heller
- Midnight’s Children ~ Salman Rushdie
- Love in the Time of Cholera ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Possession ~ A S Byatt
- The Tin Drum ~ Günter Grass