The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts

(Originally written March 28, 2018)

My Goodreads review of The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts by Louis de Berniéres

I found this book to be a very good read; but, somewhat difficult to classify in my rather haphazard and arbitrary bookshelf labels. I put it on the English-Lit shelf because de Berniéres is English. I also placed it on my Latin-American bookshelf because it reads a lot like other Latin American stories and is set in a fictitious Latin American country. It's a funny book that is definitely a bastard son of Candide, treating nothing as sacred in the wake of its dark humor. It doesn't have quite the pace of Voltaire (what does?); but, other than maybe trying to use obtuse words, the seeming rabbit holes that de Berniéres leads us down tie together nicely in the end. I enjoyed this book and am looking forward to diving into number two of his Latin American trilogy.

If I ever write a book, this magical realism is a style I'd like to emulate.